Giuseppe Pignataro

This paper examines whether a low-cost informational message randomly displayed to nursery-school teachers generated a short-run book-donation response. Embedded in an early-reading initiative, the program involved 250 nursery schools located in Northern Italy and selected through a targeted process that prioritized more vulnerable areas. In fall 2022, teachers in participating schools who voluntarily completed a survey were randomly shown either an informational message about the value of early reading or no additional message. In this setting, the randomized component is individual-level and conditional on survey completion: schools themselves and teacher survey participation were not randomized. We aggregate the randomized message assignments at the school level and evaluate the number of books per 100 enrolled children donated during the campaign window. On average, schools with more respondent teachers randomly assigned to the message received more books, conditional on the number of teacher respondents. In the preferred assignment-based specifications, one additional respondent teacher assigned to the message is associated with approximately 14-15 additional donated books per 100 children. Exploratory heterogeneity suggests a larger response in more affluent and less unequal local contexts and in settings where coordination costs are lower. Accordingly, the paper provides assignment-based evidence that teacher-targeted information can generate a short-run donation response.

This paper introduces a new variance-based measure of inequality of opportunity (EOp) grounded in a decomposition of the Coefficient of Variation (CV). Our approach disentangles overall inequality into a between-group component driven by circumstances beyond individual control (e.g., gender, family background, or region of birth) and a within-group component which captures effort and idiosyncratic heterogeneity. Within this framework, we characterize three increasingly stringent EOp criteria, capturing equality in group means, equality in within-group dispersion, and their joint validity. Using EU-SILC income data, we illustrate the conceptual and empirical relevance of the method data and highlight substantial cross-country heterogeneity in both average outcomes and within-type variability across European countries. The results show that mean-based evaluations alone may fail to capture important differences in outcome dispersion across circumstance groups, underscoring the value of a variance-based approach for the analysis of equality of opportunity.

This paper studies the regional geography of perceived inequality in Italy using evidence from a large-scale online survey developed within the (Growing Resilient, Inclusive and Sustainable) GRINS observatory. The survey complements official statistics by capturing dimensions that conventional distributional indicators do not directly observe, including subjective class placement, current economic adequacy, intergenerational comparison, adolescent living conditions, social support, and everyday exposure to richer and poorer groups. The paper has a double aim. Substantively, it documents how inequality is experienced and narrated across Italian regions. Methodologically, it shows why survey-based evidence is essential for interpreting territorial disparities alongside official sources such as the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). The results reveal a multidimensional pattern in which perceived inequality is shaped not only by material strain, but also by remembered disadvantage, fragile support networks, and persistent upward comparison. The regional ranking that emerges is not a mechanical reflection of standard narratives of deprivation and cannot be reduced to a simple territorial divide. The paper therefore argues that a fuller understanding of inequality in Italy requires integrating official measures with systematic evidence on how households perceive their social position and relative distance from others.

Understanding the role of information among disadvantaged students is crucial in explaining their investment decisions in higher education. Indeed, information barriers on the returns and the gains from completing college may explain a substantial share of variation in students' degree completion. We conduct a field experiment with 7,806 university students in Italy who benefit from financial aid assistance, by providing information, either on the labor market returns of completing college or on the education returns of meeting the academic requirements attached to the financial aid. Our results suggest that only the latter information treatment has a positive effect on academic performance, increasing the number of credits obtained by around 3, and by decreasing the probability of dropout by around 4 percentage points. We also find that the results are mediated by an aspiration lift generated by our treatment.