We collect data on operations, targets and human resources management practices in over 1,800 schools educating 15-year-olds in eight countries. Overall, we show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational outcomes. The UK, Sweden, Canada and the US obtain the...

We estimate peer effects for fourth graders in six European countries. The identification relies on variation across classes within schools. We argue that classes within primary schools are formed roughly randomly with respect to family background. Similar to previous studies, we find sizeable...

For more than a century, educated cities have grown more quickly than comparable cities with less human capital. This fact survives a battery of other control variables, metropolitan area fixed effects and tests for reverse causality. We also find that skilled cities are growing because they are...

This paper documents a counter-cyclical pattern in the health of children, and examines whether this pattern is due to selection of mothers choosing to give birth or due to behavioral changes. We study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby's conception and parental...

This paper develops two methods for estimating the effect of schooling on achievement test scores that control for the endogeneity of schooling by postulating that both schooling and test scores are generated by a common unobserved latent ability. These methods are applied to data on schooling...

In 1973, the Indonesian government began one of the largest school construction programs ever. We use 2016 nationally representative data to examine the long-term and intergenerational effects of additional schooling as a child. We use a difference-in-differences identification strategy...

This paper presents new evidence on the evolution of black-white earnings differences among all men at different points in the distribution. We study two dimensions of earnings gaps: the black-white difference in earnings; and the difference between a black man's position in the black earnings...

The effective governance of local public services depends critically on the civic engagement of local citizens. However, recent efforts to promote effective citizen oversight of the public-sector services in developing countries have had mixed results. This study discusses and evaluates a...

This paper explores the implications of measuring college productivity in two different dimensions: earning and learning. We compute system-wide measures using administrative data from the country of Colombia that link social security records to students' performance on a national college...

This paper uses a RCT to estimate the effectiveness of guided instruction methods as implemented in under-performing schools in Chile. The intervention improved performance substantially for the first cohort of students, but not the second. The effect is mainly accounted for by children from...