The impact of master's degree on Italian graduates' earnings

Abstract

The present study provides new evidence on Italian graduates’ earnings in their early career comparing wages for workers who had a master’s degree with those for workers who had a bachelor’s degree four years after graduation. The data used in this article come from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). In order to mitigate a potential selection bias into treatment (master degrees), we conducted a propensity score matching (PSM) analysis and we estimate the effect of master’s degree on monthly net wage of graduates. Further we perform a sensitivity analysis based on the simulation with calibrated confounders (Ichino et al., 2008).