While there is a big literature on the benefits of pre-school education, only little is known why kindergarten attendance improves later-life outcomes. This is partly because most studies analyze the effect of complete 2 years pre-school programs. In order to shed light into the black box of...

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...

The paper adds to the literature on extracurricular early childhood education and child development by exploiting unique data on an educational project in Germany, the Junior University (JU). By utilizing a quasi-experimental study design we estimate the causal short-term effect of JU enrollment...

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...

The direct democratic choice of an examination standard, i.e., a performance level required to graduate, is evaluated against a utilitarian welfare function. It is shown that the median preferred standard is inefficiently low if the marginal cost of reaching a higher performance reacts more...

Higher education is subsidized worldwide, although with pronounced differences in levels of subsidization. While public funds account for about 90% of universities budgets in Scandinavian countries, the share of public funds in Great Britain and the US is less that 30%. Subsidization is...

This paper investigates the role of early life adversity and home resources in terms of competence formation and school achievement based on data from an epidemiological cohort study following 364 children from birth to adolescence. Results indicate that organic and psychosocial risks present in...

Numerous studies analyze gender wage differences focusing on gross hourly wages. The analysis of differences in gross wages allows statements on productivity differences between men and women and to quantify the unexplainable wage gap which is often attributed to discrimination. While there is...

The Great Recession and the resulting European debt crisis revived a debate about deeper fiscal integration in the Eurozone. We discuss different alternatives how an unemployment insurance system for the euro area could be designed and run counterfactual simulations based on micro data to...

We study education and income tax policies in a model with endogenous selection into college. Our framework is strongly influenced by the empirical college literature and incorporates heterogenous returns and tastes for college, earnings risk (implying uncertain returns to college) and...