We evaluate the effect of the federal students’ financial assistance scheme (BAfoeG) on enrolment rates into higher education by exploiting the exogenous variation introduced through a discrete shift in the repayment regulations. Supported students had to repay the full loan until 1990....

It is often suggested that team spirit counteracts free-riding. Testing for team spirit with field data is difficult, however, due to an inherent identification problem. In this paper test for team spirit experimentally. In a team work task we vary subjects' information about relative team...

A number of studies have indicated that peer smoking is a highly influential factor in a young person's decision to smoke. However, these results are suspect because the studies often fail to account for selection and simultaneity bias. This paper develops an econometric model of youth smoking...

The influence of peer behavior on an individual's choices has received renewed interest in recent years. However, accurate measures of this influence are difficult to obtain. Standard reduced-form methods lead to upwardly biased estimates due to simultaneity, common shocks, and nonrandom peer...

Researchers and educators often argue that a student's peers strongly influence his or her educational outcomes. If so, an unequal distribution of advantaged and disadvantaged students across schools in a community will leave many students doubly disadvantaged and amplify existing inequalities....

Local financing of public schools in the U.S. leads to a bundling of two distinct choices - residential choice and school choice - and increases the degree of socioeconomic segregation across school districts. A school finance reform can go a long way in weakening this link. In this paper I...

This paper decomposes the large regression residuals of income across 84 U.S. Native American economies (USNAEs) into Solow and Solow-like parts. Decomposition is accomplished algebraically. The calculations find a weak to negative correlation between income and Solow residuals, and a strong...

I show that in a conventional Ramsey model, between one-fourth and one- half of income differences across countries can be explained by a single factor: The steady-state effect of large, persistent differences in national average IQ on worker productivity. These differences in cognitive...

From 1940 to 1990, a 10 percent increase in a metrpolitan area’s concentration of college-educated residents was associated with a .6 percent increase in subsequent employment growth. Using data on growth in wages and house values, I attempt to distinguish between explanations for this...

I estimate a life cycle model of consumption choice with unemployment risk. Employed individuals face the risk of losing their job. Unemployed agents receive job random offers of different quality, which they can accept or reject. Following the loss of a job and during unemployment, an agent’s...