The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant disruption in schooling worldwide. This paper uses global test score data to estimate learning losses. It models the effect of school closures on achievement by predicting the deviation of the most recent results from a linear trend using data from...

The effect of school closures in the spring of 2020 on the math, science, and reading skills of secondary school students in Poland is estimated. The COVID-19-induced school closures lasted 26 weeks in Poland, one of Europe's longest periods of shutdown. Comparison of the learning outcomes with...

To what extent has the learning progress of school-aged children slowed during the COVID-19 pandemic? A pre-registered analysis of the first international assessment to be published since the pandemic is conducted to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on student reading. The effect of closures on...

Increasing the share of vocational secondary schooling has been a mainstay of development policy for decades, perhaps nowhere more so than in formerly socialist countries. The transition, however, led to significant restructuring of school systems, including a declining share of vocational...

This paper presents new estimates of the returns to education in the Russian Federation. Private returns to education are three times greater for higher education compared to vocational education, and the returns to education for females are higher than for males. Returns for females show an...

The predictive power of the PISA test items for future student success is examined based on data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) for the PISA 2003 cohort. This working paper analyses how students’ responses to mathematics and problem-solving items in PISA 2003 are...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to expand our understanding of the decisions on labour supply, with particular attention given to the role of conditions of a contract between an employer and an employee. In the paper the value, from the employee’s perspective, of different...