The extensive use of foreign languages in schooling might have an important role to play in the poor educational outcomes observed on the African continent. Exploiting the language policy change of 1994 in Ethiopia as a natural experiment, we estimate the effects of provision of mother tongue...

In this paper, we study the higher education financing based on the classical contributory versus self-funded pension funding scheme. We provide a brief discussion of how a system based on student debt can be seen ’funded’ and why it fails to ensure equity and efficiency and funding for the...

In 2013 Spain introduced a series of educational reforms explicitly inspired by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 results. These reforms were mainly implemented in secondary education – based upon the assumption that this is where Spain’s educational problems...

In 2009 the European Council published its Europe 2020 Strategy in which it fixed a number of social, educational and economic targets to be achieved by 2020. However, given the current economic crisis, the majority of European countries are struggling to attain these goals. In this framework,...

Using a counterfactual approach, this paper empirically investigates the impact of an educational programme recently introduced in the Province of Trento (North-East of Italy). The aim of the policy is to foster university enrolment of students from low-income families and to reduce inequalities...

Why do some federations implement highly progressive intergovernmental transfer schemes while others do not? First, this essay establishes some stylized facts, using provincial-level data from nine federations to measure the extent of inter-regional redistribution achieved through...

Do governments increase public employment in election years? This paper answers this question by using data from Sweden and Finland, two countries that are similar in many respects but in which local elections are held at different points in time. These facts make it possible for us to separate...