A new bipartite matching approach for record linkage: the case of two big Italian databases

In recent years, university student mobility in Italy has worsened the north-south economic divide. Therefore, studying this phenomenon and its determinants is necessary to provide helpful information to support socio-economic policies. Thus, this paper aims at integrating two big databases about university students in Italy: the first one is provided by the Ministry of University and Research, concerning the university careers of student cohorts; the second one is provided by the AlmaLaurea consortium, concerning the university experiences of graduates and their success in the labour market. Both databases contain socio-demographic information that complements each other. The proposed method is a modification of the Fellegi-Sunter method, which, from the preliminary outcomes, seems to achieve very satisfactory results.