The use of lotteries is advocated to desegregate schools. We study lottery quotas embedded in the two most common school choice mechanisms, namely deferred and immediate acceptance mechanisms. Some seats are allocated based on merit (e.g., grades) and some based on lottery draws. We focus on the...

Confidence is often seen as the key to success. Empirical evidence about how such beliefs about one's abilities causally map into actions is, however, sparse. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the causal effect of an increase in confidence about one's own ability on two central...

We use a long panel data set for four entry cohorts into an internal labor market toanalyze the effect of age on the probability to participate in different training measures.We find that training participation probabilities are inverted u-shaped with age and thatlonger training measures are...

Conventional R&D-based growth theory suggests that productivitygrowth is positively correlated with population size or population growth,an implication which is hard to see in the data. Here we integrate R&D-basedgrowth into a unied growth setup with micro-founded fertility and...

This paper provides an introduction and overview of my research on the Economics of Language. The approach is that language skills among immigrants and native-born linguistic minorities are a form of human capital. There are costs and benefits associated with this characteristic embodied in the...

Using the large-scale German Socio-Economic Panel, this note reports direct empirical evidence for significant correlations between risk aversion and labour market outcomes (full-time employment, temporary agency work, fixed-term contracts, employer change, quits, training, wages, and job...

Assuming a two-period model with endogenous choices of labour, education, and saving, it is shown to be second-best efficient not to distort the choice of education...

This paper examines the relationship between the brain drain and country size, as well as the extent of small states overall loss of human capital. We find that small states are the main losers because they i) lose a larger proportion of their skilled labor force and ii) exhibit stronger...