We study the determinants of 19th century mass migration with special attention to the role of institutional factors beside standard economic fundamentals. We find that economic forces associated with income and demographic differentials had a major role in the determination of this historical...

In the Western world, multiculturalism has become the way to view and form "nationhood," igniting the interest to understand and model identity. The complexity of identity formation, however, has been firm and ethnic and national identities have been deviating more and more. In this paper, we...

This paper examines how exogenous income transfers during adolescence affect contemporaneous body mass index (BMI) measures and young adult obesity rates using evidence from the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth. The effects of extra income differ depending on the households’ initial...

We follow Brodaty et al. (2008) and develop a model within the signalling literature where an employer decides whether to hire a worker or not conditionally on the signals she sends – field and length of study and high education (HE) institution. The empirical design of our paper builds on...

Das deutsche Bildungssystem steht ungeachtet diverser Reformanstrengungen in der jüngeren Vergangenheit weiter vor großen Herausforderungen: Im internationalen Vergleich fehlt es an sozialer Chancengleichheit im Verlauf der Bildungskarrieren, und für eine "Bildungsnation" nehmen sich die...

This paper investigates the impact of working while in school on learning outcomes through the use of a unique micro panel dataset of students in the São Paulo municipal school system. The potential endogeneity of working decisions and learning outcomes is addressed through the use of a...

Is there a reward for basic skills in the German labor market? To answer this question, we examine the relationship between literacy, numeracy and monthly gross earnings of full-time employed workers. We use data from the ALWA survey, augmented by test scores on basic cognitive skills as well as...

This paper investigates the importance of parents reading to their young children. Using Australian data we find that parental reading to children at age 4 to 5 has positive and significant effects on reading skills and cognitive skills of these children at least up to age 10 or 11. Our findings...