Despite the importance of the Bologna process for the mobility of students, and the further mobility of graduates, as well as for peace, growth and welfare in that area, nothing has been decided so far for the financing of internationally mobile students, so that the burden of that financing,...

If being around smart people makes us smarter and more productive, what can regions do to attract smart people? This paper considers endogenous cultural amenities as a location factor for high-skilled workers. To overcome selection in the provision of cultural amenities, we exploit the variation...

This paper analyzes how integrated labor markets affect the financing of higher education. For this, we employ a general-equilibrium model with overlapping generations and individuals who differ in their abilities. At the first stage, governments can choose the quality of education and the...

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for the quantitative analysis of the private and fiscal returns to schooling and of the effect of public policies on private incentives to invest in education. This framework is applied to 14 member states of the European Union. For each of these...

This paper studies a two-region model in which unemployment, education decisions and interregional migration are endogenous. The poorer region exhibits both lower wages and higher unemployment rates, and migrants to the richer region are disproportionally skilled. The brain drain from the poor...

We explain why means-tested college tuition and means-tested government grants to college students can be efficient. The critical idea is that attending college is both an investment good and a consumption good. If education has a consumption benefit and tuition is uniform, the marginal rich...

The passage of Title IX, the 1972 Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act, expanded high school athletic opportunities to include girls, revolutionizing mass sports participation in the United States. This paper analyzes high school athletic participation in the United States and how sports...

We develop a model of education where individuals face educational risk. Successfully entering the skilled labor sector depends on individual effort in education and public resources, but educational risk still causes (income) inequality. We show that an optimal public policy consists of...

Economic development in Latin America has trailed most other world regions over the past four decades despite its relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle can be resolved by considering the actual learning as expressed in tests of cognitive skills, on which...

Differences in teacher quality are commonly cited as a key determinant of the huge international student performance gaps. However, convincing evidence on this relationship is still lacking, in part because it is unclear how to measure teacher quality consistently across countries. We use unique...