About Us
The Italian recovery plan (PNRR) emphasizes the strategic role of Vocational Education and Training (VET) to reduce youth unemployment and foster innovation, addressing specific resources to sustain the development of tertiary VET and to the enhancement of the dual system.
Our research project aims at filling this gap as – to the best of our knowledge – no robust ex-post impact evaluation of the reforms implemented has been carried out yet.
We have – as main goal – a thorough evaluation – carried out with counterfactual techniques – of the impact of VET systems on individuals, firms and local development.
More specifically our project starts with the discussion of the main legal and institutional aspects of VET at both national and regional level. Indeed, since the supply of tertiary VET courses is provided by foundations, it is crucial to investigate the legal rationale of this choice.
Then, the impact evaluation of the main strands of the reform will be carried out as follows:
- Firstly, the exogenous variation introduced by the regional heterogeneous implementation of the reforms will be exploited to uncover the effects on individual outcomes using counterfactual techniques matching on observables and differences in difference;
- Secondly, for the very first time, we will study how the involvement of firms in the provision of tertiary VET affects firms’ performance;
- Lastly, we will explore whether local VET systems affect firm demography, innovation rate and survival at provincial level, and reduce local youth unemployment and NEET rates.
To answer these questions, we will compare local labour markets where VET systems are present (or outperform) with those where they are absent (or underperform) by using diff-in diff techniques, exploiting the different timing of VET courses inception across provinces.
We believe that the results of this project may be of interest not only from a scholarly point of view, but also timely for policymaking, in consideration of the potential role assigned to VET in the PNRR to contrast youth unemployment and foster young people occupation after the pandemic.
Our Team
The whole is much more than the sum of it’s part. Meet our team!
Simona Comi
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Simona Lorena Comi is an applied economist specializing in labor economics, vocational education, and policy evaluation. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA). Her work examines VET systems, education policy, and labor market dynamics.
Federica Origo
CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
She is a Full Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics. She is an applied labor economist with expertise in education and labor market policies. Her current research interests include the effects of VET, gender differences in education and the labor market, and firms’ adjustments to demand shocks.
Paolo Bertuletti
RESEARCHER
He is a research fellow at the Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo. His studies focus on VET and the theoretical basis of work-based learning. He is editor-in-chief of the journals CQIIA Rivista and Nuova Professionalità.
Annalisa Cristini
RESEARCHER
She is a Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Bergamo and Vice-Rector responsible for Welfare and Sustainable Development. Her research interests focus on labor market dynamics, economic inequality, household financial stability, consumption patterns, and real estate wealth.
Mara Grasseni
RESEARCHER
She is an associate professor at the University of Bergamo. She obtained a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Milan. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a research fellow at Fondazione ENI Mattei and IRER Lombardia.
Salvatore la Porta
researchER
He is currently a public law researcher at the University of Milan-Bicocca, where he also teaches public economic law.
His main research topics are social rights, regional law, and the public-private relationship in activities of
general interest.
Andrea Potestio
RESEARCHER
He is a full professor of general pedagogy at the Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo. His main research areas are the pedagogy of work and philosophy of education. He is the director of the A-level magazine Cqiia magazine.
Laura Resmini
researchER
She is an associate professor in the Department of Business and Law at the University of Milano Bicocca. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies. Her main research areas are labor economics and regional economics.
Arif Anindita
research fellow
He is an applied economist with a research focus on the economics of education, family economics, and their intersection. He is currently a research fellow at the University of Milano-Bicocca. Prior to his graduate study, he was an education and social policy analyst.
Virginia Capriotti
research fellow
She is a Research Fellow in Economic Sciences at the University of Bergamo and a Ph.D. candidate in Human Sciences and Welfare Innovation. Her work focuses on vocational training challenges, especially within the Italian VET system.
Andrea Randazzo
RESEARCH FELLOW
He is a lawyer at the Milan Court and works with the professorship of public law institutions at the University of Milan-Bicocca. He mainly deals with litigation and advising companies on civil and commercial matters in the field of healthcare.
Cristiana Zanzottera
Project manager
She studied at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (Milan). She has experience working as a Senior Researcher at the IRS and at WU Vienna. She has experience as lecturer at WU Vienna, at Unicatt, and at the University of Eastern Piedmont.
Contact Us:
Department of Business and Law, University of Milano-Bicocca, Via Bicocca degli Arcimboldi 8, Milano 20126, Italy
+39-0264487461
vet4growth@unimib.it
Funded by: the European Union – Next Generation EU,Mission 4 Component 1 (CUP H53D23002470006)
