Margherita Fort is Full Professor at the University of Bologna (Italy) since Sept 2020, where she was previously hired as Assistant Professor in October 2007 and Associate Professor between 2014 and 2020.

She received her Ph.D. in Applied Statistics in Economic and Social Sciences from the University of Padua and was Marie Curie Fellow and ECASS Visiting Fellow at ISER (Institute for Social and Economic Research-ISER, Essex), and Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute.

She collaborates with the FBK-IRVAPP research centre and is a research fellow at IZA (joined in March 2012), CESifo (joined in November 2013) as well as at CEPR (joined in 2020).

She has published in international journals such as Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Labor Economics, Economic Journal, Economic Policy.

Her research deals mainly with applied micro-econometrics, specifically assessing the effects of public policies, with applications mainly in the field of the education economics and labour economics. In the recent years, her research is specifically focussing on the evidence-based investments in young children and their families.

She was the local coordinator of the Bologna Research Unit for the project "The Policy Implications of Demographic Ageing" funded from the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research (MIUR, FIRB 2008 call) and she was member of research teams of other projects funded from the EUI (project "La meglio infanzia", 2015), the Fondazione Rodolfo De Benedetti (project "La meglio infanzia", 2014), Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna (project "La meglio infanzia", 2014), the Institute of Advaced Studies (ISA 2013 call, single winner, project "La meglio infanzia"), the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (2011 call, project "Childcare, Grandparents or Nannies? What is Best for Children When Parents are Away"), MIUR (PRIN 2009 call, project "Problems and solutions for the evaluation of performance in the Public Administration"), CARIPARO Foundation (Progetti di Eccellenza, 2008 call, project "The Effect of Early Life Conditions and Outcomes on Economic Wellbeing and Health Later in Life").

Her current projects are aimed at the design and evaluation of interventions targeting families of young children (MIUR PRIN 2017 grant), the impact assessment of on-going programs (Girls Code it Better aimed at secondary school students; Spencer Foundation Small grant for Education Research with M. Carlana) and the development of methodological tools in the field of causal inference.