Facing substantial financial pressure, many districts close schools in order to preserve solvency and improve student outcomes. Using a new longitudinal data set on all non-Cook County Illinois schools, we examine the determinants of high school closure decisions from 1991 through 2005. Our...

This paper investigates whether the religious identity of state legislators in India influences development outcomes, both for citizens of their religious group and for the population as a whole. To control for politician identity to be correlated with constituency level voter preferences or...

Using panel data for non-OECD countries covering the period 1970-2012, this paper analyzes the impact of the duration of primary education on school enrollment, drop-outs and completion rates. The empirical results show that for children in elementary school one additional grade of primary...

As opposed to many other school inputs, textbooks have frequently been demonstrated to significantly foster student achievement. Using the rich data set provided by the 'Program on the Analysis of Education Systems' (PASEC) for five francophone, sub-Saharan African countries, this paper goes...

This paper looks at the contribution of political leaders to enhance citizens' education and investigate how the educational attainment of the population is affected while a leader with higher education remains in office. For this purpose, we consider educational transitions of political leaders...

The immense literature on discrimination treats outcomes as relative: One group suffers compared to another. But does a difference arise because agents discriminate against others – are exophobic – or because they favor their own kind – are endophilic? This difference matters, as the...

In recent years international student mobility increased. While net hosting countries are in a better position to win highly educated students for their labour force, they face the additional cost of providing the education. In much of continental Europe these costs are not levied on students,...

Many studies examine the importance of teachers in students' learning, but few exist on the contribution of principals. We measure the effect of principals on gains in primary test scores in North Carolina and estimate the standard deviation of principals' value added to be 0.12 -0.17. We find...

This study assesses the relationship between sleep quality and academic achievement. We survey college students about their sleep quality by means of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) before the start of their first exam period at university. PSQI scores are matched with course marks in...

Using the Children of the Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), we examine the association between education at the intensive margin and twenty pecuniary and non-pecuniary adult outcomes among first- and second-generation American immigrant youth. Education at the intensive margin is measured by...