Several studies have shown that body height is positively associated with educational attainment. In this paper, we investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship using data on German pre-teen students. We show that (i) taller children are more likely to enroll in ‘Gymnasium’, the most...

Research on immigrants’ educational disadvantages largely focuses on differences in student achievement tests. Exploiting data from the German PIRLS extension, we find that second-generation immigrants face additional disadvantages with respect to grades and teacher recommendations for...

We study whether early tracking of students based on ability increases migrant-native achievement gaps. To eliminate confounding impacts of unobserved country traits, we employ a differences-in-differences strategy that exploits international variation in the age of tracking as well as student...

At the age of ten German pupils are given a secondary school track recommendation which largely determines the actual track choice. Track choice has major effects on the life course, mainly through labor market outcomes. Using data from the German PISA extension study, we analyze the effect of...

Building on a theoretical model we test the hypothesis that effort choices and preferences for redistribution are simultaneously determined. Using cross-country panel data from the World Value Survey, we find that it is important to model preferences for redistribution and effort choices...

This paper provides a model of “social hysteresis,” whereby long, deep recessions demotivate workers and thereby lead them to change their work ethic. In switching from a pro-work to an anti-work identity, their incentives to seek and retain work fall and consequently their employment...

This paper investigates the way in which job mobility contributes to the emergence of a gender wage gap in the Italian labour market. We show that men experience higher wage growth than women during the first 10 years of their career, and that this difference is particularly large when workers...

We study the importance of economists’ professional situation toward their life satisfaction based on a unique survey of mostly academic economists. On average, economists report to be highly happy with life. Satisfaction is positively related to spending more time on doing research. The lack...

We compare reported job satisfaction with vignette evaluations of hypothetical jobs by using a British, Greek and Dutch data set, containing 95 randomly assigned vignettes. In order to test comparability of international data sets recently the method of anchoring vignettes has been introduced by...

Hierarchical and comprehensive school systems are compared with respect to efficiency. At given ability, a student?s probability of not completing school rises with increasing mean ability in class. Both school systems can yield identical average failure rates. Given that output losses in case...