In the Austrian (as well as the German) education system students have to choose between different school tracks at the age of 10. We argue that early tracking creates inefficiencies because the earlier the track choice has to be made, the more it is influenced by factors other than innate...

Gender segregation in the labor market may be explained by women's re- luctance to choose technical occupations, although the foundations for career choices are certainly laid earlier, during education. Educational experts claim that female students are doing better in math and science and are...

In this paper we provide evidence for the impact of public funding on enrolment of students in college. We use a panel for European countries and apply instrumental variables techniques to find that public funding for schooling - regardless at what level - does increase college enrolment alike...

We study the effect of job displacement on fertility in a sample of white collar women in Austria. Using instrumental variables methods we show that unemploy- ment incidence as such has no negative effect on fertility decisions, but the very fact of being displaced from a career-oriented job...

We study the relationship between education and fertility, exploiting compulsory schooling reforms in Europe as source of exogenous variation in education. Using data from 8 European countries, we assess the causal effect of education on the number of biological kids and the incidence of...

In this paper we address the long-run effects of childhood shocks on health in late adulthood. Applying a life-course approach and data from SHARE we estimate direct and indirect effects of shocks like relocation, dispossession, or hunger on health outcomes after age fifty. Having lived in a...

In this paper we investigate how fertility decisions respond to unex- pected career interruptions which occur as a consequence of job displace- ment. Using an event study approach we compare the birth rates of dis- placed women with those of women una®ected by job loss after establish- ing the...

Little is known about the response behavior of parents whose children are exposed to an early-life shock. In this paper we interpret the prenatal exposure of the Austrian 1986 cohort to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident as a negative human capital shock and examine their parents’...