Survey data for a large sample of recent graduates from 37 German universities are used to study labor market outcomes of highly skilled young women and immigrants. Our results indicate a systemic wage gap for women, but not for male immigrants. We find no evidence that female immigrants suffer...

This study analyses the effect of an increase in college costs on student achievement, particularly time-to-degree and performance. I exploit a unique policy at a Swiss university to identify and estimate the causal effect of an increase in tuition. Students faced an unexpected raise in tuition....

When grades lose their informative value because the percentage of students receiving the best grade rises without any corresponding increase in ability, this is called grade inflation. Conventional wisdom says that such grade inflation is unavoidable since it is essentially costless to award...

We benefit from the Bologna reform to show how course and program policies affect academic achievement. We examine two similar programs at the business school of a major European university, which were both reformed. Time lags in the reforms allow us to estimate the difference in the differences...

This paper examines field experiment in which we encourage the use of computer-based tests (quizzes) through a set of non-financial incentives and test their effect on effort and performance of students. Our identification strategy exploits cross-cohort experimental variation in assessment rules...

We use the recent introduction of tuition fees at public universities in seven of the sixteen German states to identify the effects of tuition fees on university enrollment of first-year students at German public universities. Our study differs from previous research in two important ways....

Why did substantial parts of Europe abandon the institutionalized churches around 1900? Empirical studies using modern data mostly contradict the traditional view that education was a leading source of the seismic social phenomenon of secularization. We construct a unique panel dataset of...

Existing estimates of the labor-market returns to human capital give a distorted picture of the role of skills across different economies. International comparisons of earnings analyses rely almost exclusively on school attainment measures of human capital, and evidence incorporating direct...

The new training literature suggests that in a monopsonistic market employers will not only pay for firm-specific training but also for general training if the risk of poaching is limited. This implies that training participation should decrease when competition for employees is higher among...

In Germany and many other countries, students are tracked into various secondary school types. This paper studies whether parents or teachers assess students potential educational performance more adequately. Educational attainment is measured by grade retention rates. We take advantage of a...