Returns to educational performance at entry into the Italian labour market

This paper studies whether a better educational performance enhances the chances of success at entry into the Italian labour market. Two indicators of educational performance are considered: the final grades in the diploma achieved and the speed with which a given educational qualification was completed. It is argued that the Italian educational system is highly standardized, in terms of the curricula and the examination system. Thus, it provides employers with information that can be used when making decisions about whom to employ. Therefore, educational performance should be rewarded by employers. At a theoretical level, a queuing model of the functioning of the labour market is specified and the need to distinguish the processes that lead to dependent employment and self-employment is highlighted. The empirical analysis is based on the Italian Household Longitudinal Survey and consists of an event-history analysis of the duration of first job search and a regression-type analysis of the prestige score of the first job. The results suggest that (a) individual educational performance increases the chances of success at entry into the labour market, (b) the importance of educational performance is greater in the youngest cohort of school-leavers.