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,...

This paper estimates the impact of BMI, obesity and overweight on direct medical costs. We apply panel data econometrics and use a two-part model with a longitudinal dataset of medical and administrative records of patients in primary and secondary healthcare centres in Spain followed up over...

We evaluate a program that introduced bilingual education in English and Spanish in primary education in some public schools of the Madrid region in 2004. Under this program students not only study English as a foreign language but also some subjects (at least Science, History and Geography) are...

This paper investigates the role performed by mothers in affecting their childrens’ performance at school. The article develops firstly a theoretical model in which household (parent - child pair) is treated as an individual, whose utility depends both on the performance at school of the...

This paper focuses on mechanisms of “peer interactions” among native and non-native students. We present a theoretical framework based on Lazear (2001) education production model and on the “sub-cultural” sociological theory and we test the theoretical predictions exploiting a dataset of...

We analyze the intergenerational transmission of education focusing on the interplay between family and neighborhood effects. We develop a theoretical model suggesting that both neighborhood quality and parental effort are of importance for the education attained by children. This model proposes...

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...

English policymakers have been disappointed with children’s performance on TIMSS and PISA, particularly in comparison to the results of young people from East Asia. In this paper we provide new insight into the England – East Asia gap by considering how cross-national differences in math...

Academics and policymakers have shown great interest in cross-national comparisons of intergenerational earnings mobility. However, producing consistent and comparable estimates of earnings mobility is not a trivial task. In most countries researchers are unable to observe earnings information...

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...