ZELDA BRUTTI https://sites.google.com/site/zeldabrutti/ zelda.brutti@eui.eu EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE – ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT DAVID.LEVINE@EUI.EU +39 0554685913 Placement Officer : David Levine Office Contact Information Via della Piazzuola, 43 50133, Firenze (FI) Mobile: 0039 3403209571 Personal Information: Born August 1988; Female; Italian and Austrian citizen; native Italian and German, fluent English, working-­‐knowledge Spanish. Pre-­‐doctoral Studies: BSc in Economics, University of Verona, 110/110 cum laude, “Graduate of the year”, 2010 MSc in Economics, University of Essex, Distinction, 84/100 exam GPA, 2011 Doctoral Studies: European University Institute (2011 to present) Ph.D. Candidate in Economics Thesis Title: “Essays on Education Policy Evaluation” Expected Completion Date: June 2016 London School of Economics (Fall 2013 to Summer 2015) Visiting student at the Department of Economics (European Doctoral Programme) References: Prof. Jérôme Adda Prof. Jörn-­‐Steffen Pischke Economics Dept., Bocconi University CEP – London School of Economics +39 02 5836 5572; jerome.adda@unibocconi.it +44 (0)20 7955 6509; s.pischke@lse.ac.uk Prof. Andrea Ichino Economics Dept., European University Institute +39 055 4685 974/928, andrea.ichino@eui.eu Research Fields: Primary fields: Economics of Education; Development Economics Secondary field: Public Economics Teaching Experience: Fall, 15 Quantitative Methods, NYU Florence, Prof. Giampiero Gallo Fall-­‐Spring, 14-­‐15 Introduction to Econometrics, LSE, Prof. Jörn-­‐Steffen Pischke Fall-­‐Spring, 14-­‐15 Quantitative one-­‐to-­‐one Support Sessions, LSE Summer, 14 Introduction to Econometrics, LSE Summer School, Prof. Chris Dougherty Fall-­‐Spring, 13-­‐14 Introduction to Econometrics, LSE, Prof. Jörn-­‐Steffen Pischke 1/3
Professional Activities Referee ReStud, Labour, SMYE2015 Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: Oct 15, 1 year Luca d’Agliano Scholarship through Luigi Einaudi Foundation Research Papers: “Cities Drifting Apart: Heterogeneous Outcomes of Decentralizing Public Education” (Job Market Paper) In this paper I provide empirical evidence for the fact that the effects of higher autonomy in public education management can be heterogeneous across local authorities depending on their level of development at the time of responsibility takeover. Colombian municipalities were assigned to administer the local public education service autonomously solely on the basis of whether they exceeded the 100 thousand inhabitants threshold. Exploiting this discontinuity, I look at the heterogeneous impact that autonomy has had on student test scores across municipalities using a regression discontinuity design and fixed-­‐effects regression on a discontinuity sample. I find a test score gap arising between autonomous municipalities in the top quartile and those in the bottom quartile of the development range, in a trend that reinforces over time. From analysis of detailed municipal balance sheet data, it emerges that the top-­‐quartile municipalities entrusted with autonomy invest in education more than the ad hoc transfers they receive, integrating these with own financial resources, while low-­‐developed cities only spend the transfers they receive. “Picking the best: does merit-­‐based selection of teachers yield better student performance?” In 2002 Colombia's public school teachers saw the introduction of a selective entry competition and of further quality incentives along their careers. This paper estimates the effect that the new quality-­‐screened teachers have on students' high school performance. We exploit the fact that the novel regulations apply only to new teachers, whereas those who were already in office in 2002 remained exempt, resulting in a variable mix of new-­‐regulation and old-­‐regulation teachers in Colombian schools. Using data at the school-­‐year-­‐subject level, we eliminate any school-­‐level confounders and associate the proportion of new-­‐regulation teachers to the variation in standardized test scores. We find positive and significant, even though modest, effects of quality-­‐
screened teachers on student performance. Marginal effects are highest when the share of new-­‐regulation teachers is lowest, and decline as the share rises. Among the new procedures introduced by the reform, the selective entry exam seems to be the one carrying the highest effectiveness in terms of teacher quality gains. “Sibling Effects in Cognitive Achievement: Are Smart Brothers and Sisters Good for You?” In this paper I investigate whether children's cognitive achievement is influenced by the cognitive achievement of their siblings. I apply system GMM to estimate a dynamic model of cognitive skill production. I allow for endogeneity of sibling performance and of other regressors, for reciprocal influence between younger and older sibling, for unobserved individual and family effects, and for state dependence of cognitive achievement. I find evidence for positive and significant sibling effects on both verbal reasoning and mathematics test scores, with results consistent across the two skills. The results support theories of cumulative achievement processes, as current achievements are shown to depend on past ones. Influence goes from older siblings to younger ones and vice versa, in contradiction with the assumption of unidirectional effect from old to young, which underlies identification in related studies. 2/3
Conference and Workshop Presentations CSWEP Public Economics sessions @ 2016 AEA Meeting (AEA 2016, San Francisco, CA) • LACEA Annual Meeting 2015 (LACEA 2015, Santa Cruz, Bolivia) • IZA European Summer School in Labour Economics (IZA 2015, Ammersee) • Royal Economic Society Conference (RES 2015, Manchester) • Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP 2015, Washington DC ) • European Doctoral Programme Jamboree (EDP Jamboree 2014, Paris) • Stockholm School of Economics / School of Transition Economics (SITE 2014, Stockholm) • Economics PhD Conference @ Princeton University (EconCon 2014, Princeton)** • International Association for Applied Econometrics (IAAE 2014, London) International Economic Association World Congress (IEA 2014, Dead Sea – Jordan) • Royal Economic Society Conference (RES 2014, Manchester) • 1stCidE PhD Workshop in Econometrics and Empirical Economics (WEEE 2013, Perugia) • 4th International Workshop on Applied Economics of Education (IWAEE 2012, Catanzaro)** ** Accepted but unable to go 3/3