We analyze the causal effect of education on old-age cognitive abilities using German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data and regional variation in mandatory years of schooling and the supply of schools. Our outcome variable is the score an individual reaches in an ultra-short intelligence test. We...

In this paper I investigate the causal returns to education for different educational groups in Germany. I circumvent potential drawbacks of IV by employing a new method by Klein and Vella (2010). In this approach identification is not based on instruments but on the presence of...

Policy makers are interested in fostering economic growth and employment. Therefore, it is important to know how to boost innovation in an effective way. This paper investigates whether entrepreneurs with technical education are more innovative in high-tech industries than economists. The main...

What is the value of basic skills in the German labor market which until recently was considered to be strongly regulated but has gained flexibility in the last 15 years? To answer this question, we examine the relationship between adults' literacy, numeracy and earnings. We use data from the...

This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. At the end of the first year of the program, children in home visited families perform significantly better than...

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...

This contribution investigates the role of education in domestic terrorism for 133 countries between 1984 and 2007. The findings point at a nontrivial effect of education on terrorism. Lower education (primary education) tends to promote terrorism in a cluster of countries where the...

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...