We are deeply sorry that Franceco Pastore passed away on July 13 at age 56.

Until his death he served as an Associate Professor of Economics at Università of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" (formerly Seconda Università di Napoli). He was also the country lead for Italy of the GLO and a member of the executive board of the European Association of Comparative Economic Studies (EACES) and its Italian sister AISSEC.

He was an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics and of the International Journal of Manpower, among other journals. Since June 2019, he acted as the Managing Editor of the IZA Journal of Development and Migration.

He was the secretary of the Italian Association of Labor Economics (AIEL) from 2010 to 2016.

In 2013 Francesco Pastore qualified as Full Professor of Economic Policy (national habilitation system) and as Associate Professor of Political Economy and Economic Statistics. He gained a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Sussex, a Dottorato di Ricerca in Development Economics and Policy at the University of Naples "Federico II" and a Master of Science in Economics at Coripe (Piemonte), University of Turin.

He acted as a consultant for several such organizations as, among others, European Commission, European Parliament, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, ILO, UNDP, UNESCO and World Bank. He was awarded research grants by EU-TSER, CERGE-EI and EERC.

His main research interests were in labor and education economics. He was also interested in development and transition economics. He contributed extensively in several such fields as regional unemployment differentials, school-to-work transitions, labor market dynamics, gender discrimination, human capital investment, employment services and evaluation of passive as well as active labor market policy, labor market consequences of international trade and the economics of nonprofit organizations.

His scientific papers were published in international journals (such as Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Surveys; Economics of Education Review; Studies in Higher Education; Labor Economics; Research in Higher Education; Stata Journal; Journal of Policy Modeling; European Journal of Development Research; Social Indicators Research; Economics of Transition; Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics; Eastern European Economics; Post-Communist Economies; Empirica) in Italian journals (such as Economia Politica; Economia & Lavoro; Economia dei servizi; Scuola democratica; Studi Economici) and in edited books published by Palgrave MacMillan, Routledge, and Springer.

In 2015, he published a SpringerBrief book on: "The Youth Experience Gap. Explaining National Differences in the School-to-Work Transition".

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in February 2004.