Education policy-makers and practitioners want to know which policies and practices can best achieve their goals. But research that can inform evidence-based policy often requires complex methods to distinguish causation from accidental association. Avoiding econometric jargon and technical...

This paper assembles a panel data set that measures cognitive achievement for 128 countries around the world from 1965 to 2010 in 5-year intervals. The data set is constructed from international achievement tests, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment and the Trends in...

Public child care is expected to assist families in reconciling work with family life. Yet, empirical evidence for the relevance of public child care to maternal employment is inconclusive. We exploit the introduction of a legal claim to a place in kindergarten in Germany, which was contingent...