When the Soviet Union collapsed a transition process started in Eastern Europe. This included a number of reforms to adapt the educational system to the new requirements of the job market. To assess the educational systems in Eastern Europe, this paper takes a look at the gap in PISA test scores...

We study the effects of random assignment to coeducational and single-sex classes on the academic performance of female high school students. Our estimation results show that single-sex schooling improves the performance of female students in mathematics. This positive effect increases if the...

We present results from a field experiments at Swiss high schools in which we compare the effectiveness of teaching methods in economics. We randomly assigned classes into an experimental and a conventional teaching group, or a control group that received no specific instruction. Both of our...

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...

We present results from a field experiment at Swiss high schools in which we compare the effectiveness of a classroom experiment against conventional economics teaching. We randomly assigned classes into different teaching environments or a control group. Our results suggest that both teaching...

Using the data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this study sheds light on the gender gap in mathematics and science achievement of 15-year-olds in Turkey. We apply a semiparametric Oaxaca-Blinder (OB) decomposition to investigate the gap. This technique...

We examine differences in the efficiency of UK universities in providing research and teaching. It appears that (i) universities are more efficient in providing teaching than research, (ii) the variation of efficiency is larger in research than in teaching, and (iii) the degree of (in)efficiency...

Using the Children of the Immigrants Longitudinal Study from the United States, this paper examines the association between schooling at the intensive margin and adult outcomes among first- and second-generation American immigrants. Schooling at the intensive margin is measured by reading and...

The paper integrates human-capital investments of heterogeneous individuals into a neoclassical growth framework. The accumulation of physical capital changes relative factor prices and thus incentives to acquire skills, thereby altering the composition of the labor force. This interplay between...

According to empirical studies, the relation between the relative wage of skilled workers and their relative supply is U-shaped. This finding is explained by the effect of technological change on the incentives for humancapital investments made by heterogeneous individuals.