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Who do you know or what do you know? Informal recruitment channels, family background and university enrolments

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  • Emanuela Ghignoni
Abstract
This paper deals with the role that an extensive use of informal networks to match workers to jobs can play in the university enrolments decisions of low socioeconomic status students in Italy.By applying estimation techniques with instrumental variables to ISTAT microdata, I found that upper-secondary students coming from lower social classes are less likely to participate in higher education when they live in provinces where the percentage of newly tertiary graduates who found a job thanks to the help of relatives, family connections or friends is higher. My results are consistent with the hypothesis that the wide diffusion of ‘favouritism’ in local labour markets engenders a sense of ‘economic despair’ among those who are poorly connected, thereby damaging individual human capital accumulation, inequality of access to higher education and local socio-economic development.

Suggested Citation

  • Emanuela Ghignoni, 2017. "Who do you know or what do you know? Informal recruitment channels, family background and university enrolments," Working Papers in Public Economics 179, Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Roma.
    • Handle: RePEc:sap:wpaper:wp179
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    informal channels; favouritism; enrolments; tertiary education; local labour markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General

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