We study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children's cognitive achievement, behavioral problems, grade repetition and obesity. We address endogeneity of maternal schooling by instrumenting with variation in schooling costs when the mother grew up. Using matched data from...

We analyze the impact of adolescents' friendship relations in their final-year class of highschool on subsequent labor market success. Based on a typology of network positions we locateeach student within the social system of the school class as either: an isolate, a sycophant,a broker or a...

We study the transmission of risk attititudes in a unique survey of mothers and children in which both participated in an incentivised risk preference elicitation task. We document that risk preferences are correlated between mothers and children when the children are just 7 to 8 years old. This...

We estimate the effect of education on lifetime income in Europe, by distinguishing between individuals who lived in rural or urban areas during childhood and between individuals who had access to many or few books at age ten. We instrument years of education using reforms of compulsory...

This study presents an evolutionary process of secularization that integrates a theoretical model, simulations, and an empirical estimation that employs data from 32 countries (included in the International Social Survey Program: Religion II - ISSP, 1998). Following Bisin and Verdier (2000,...

In the last few years, significant amount of research has produced evidence in support of the signaling, credential or "sheepskin" effects in rates of return to schooling for studies of the developed as well as developing countries. An example of the former is the seminal empirical work by...

Ziel des vorliegenden Artikels ist es, zum ersten obige Argumentation einer generellen Kritik zu unterziehen; zum zweiten aber auch ihre mögliche Relevanz für den Fall der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu prüfen. Beides geschieht vor dem Hintergrund der Frage, ob die Sozialisationsfunktion von...