This article attempts to identify the causal effects of education on multiple measures of civic engagement in Italy. The identification strategy is based on changes in education legislation that have exogenously affected the schooling decision. Our empirical analysis delivers two main results. First, the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates of the effects of education on some civic measures are likely to be biased. Second, the instrumental variables (IV) estimates suggest that the direction of this bias varies across measures of civic outcomes.
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