In 2013, Francesco Pastore qualified as Full Professor of Economic Policy (national habilitation system) and as Associate Professor of Political Economy and Economic Statistics. Currently, he is Associate Professor of Economics at Università of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" (formerly Seconda Università di Napoli). He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics and a member of the executive board of the Italian Association of Comparative Economic Studies (AISSEC). He was the secretary of the Italian Association of Labor Economics (AIEL) from 2010 to 2016.

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 has acted as a consultant for several such organizations as, among others, European Commission, 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 are in labor and education economics. He is also interested in development and transition economics. He has 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 passive as well as active labor market policy, labor market consequences of international trade and nonprofit organizations.

His scientific papers have been published in international (such as Journal of Economic Surveys; Economics of Education Review; Studies in Higher Education, Stata Journal; 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 national journals (such as Economia Politica; Economia & Lavoro; Economia dei servizi; Scuola democratica; Studi Economici) and in edited books published by Palgrave MacMillan, Routledge, Springer Verlag.

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

He has co-edited three special issues of the International Journal of Manpower and two books for Physica Verlag.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in February 2004.