The effect of test anxiety on high-stakes exams: evidence from an RCT using biomarkers

We conduct a randomised control trial at an Italian university to investigate the impact of test anxiety on high-stakes exams. Students are subjected to two different interventions–silence and music–designed to influence their pre-test anxiety levels. We monitored and compared individual biomarkers before and after each treatment to measure anxiety changes and their influence on exam scores. Our findings revealed that decreased mean arterial and systolic pressures enhanced performance in fema...

Operation allied force: unintended consequences of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing on children’s outcomes

This paper estimates the causal effect of NATO's Operation Allied Force in Serbia in 1999 on health and educational outcomes of children who were in the womb during the bombing. We use entire birth records of the Serbian Statistical Office and educational outcomes provided by the Ministry of Education. The estimation results of the difference-in-differences models, combined with propensity score matching, suggest that children who were in utero during the bombing were 2 percentage points (pp)...

La rilevanza penale della sperimentazione sugli embrioni tra la tutela del diritto alla vita e la libertà della ricerca scientifica

L’articolo muove da un'analisi critica dell'art. 13 della legge n. 40/2004, supportata da suggerimenti correttivi prospettabili sia sul piano ermeneutico che sul piano di un’auspicabile riforma legislativa, che intende aprire uno spiraglio alla ricerca sulle cellule staminali degli embrioni soprannumerari: si tratta della riaffermazione di una concezione solidaristica della scienza e del diritto, tale, comunque, da non sfociare in criticabili esiti utilitaristici contrari al primato che, seco...

Sul concorso del consulente tributario con il trasgressore organico agli enti collettivi: critica alla giurisprudenza creativa