The wage return to graduate in Italian small-town universities

In this paper we use a representative sample drawn from the `Indagine Statistica sull' Inserimento Professionale dei Laureati' by the Italian National Statistical Institute and data by the Italian Ministry of Education to look at the wage returns from attendance to a regional university (i.e. not located in a metropolitan area) three years after graduation. Our results show that, after accounting for observed characteristics of individuals and colleges, a wage premium is associated to graduating in a regional university. This finding may be interpreted as regional universities enhancing the local human capital stock or creating specific skills needed by the local economic environment.