This paper formulates and estimates multistage production functions for children's cognitive and noncognitive skills. Skills are determined by parental environments and investments at different stages of childhood. We estimate the elasticity of substitution between investments in one period and...

Our objective is to analyse the role of teacher and school quality to explain differences in students' educational outcomes. With this aim, we use PISA microdata for 10 middle income and 2 high income countries and we apply decomposition methods in order to identify the role of these factors for...

Critics of international student comparisons argue that results may be influenced by differences in the extent to which countries adequately sample their entire student populations. In this research note, we show that larger exclusion and non-response rates are related to better country average...

Based on representative data, the German Micro-Census, we provide an overview of the development of self-employment and entrepreneurship in Germany between 1991 and 2010, the first two decades after reunification. We investigate the socioeconomic background of these individuals, their education,...

We construct a new, direct measure of female autonomy in household decision-making by creating an index from the principal components of a variety of household variables on which mother of a child takes decision. We then examine its impacts on her child's secondary education in Mexico and find...

This paper studies the importance of politician's qualification, in terms of education and experience, for fiscal outcomes. The analysis is based on a large panel for 2,031 German municipalities for which we have collected information on municipal budgets as well as the election results and...

Do increased instruction hours improve the performance of all students? Using PISA scores of students in ninth grade, we analyse the effect of a German education reform that increased weekly instruction hours by two hours (6.5 percent) overalmost five years. In the additional time, students are...

Leaders are critical to a country's success. They can influence domestic policy via specific measures that they enforce, and they can also influence international public opinion towards their country. Foreign Direct Investments are also essential for a country's economic growth. Our hypothesis...