In this paper, we exploit an exogenous change in the passing standard required to obtain a General Educational Development (GED) credential to identify the impact of the GED on the quarterly earnings of male dropouts, utilizing the Texas Schools Micro Data Panel (TSMP). These unique data contain...

This paper utilizes the self-employed to analyze the observed increase in the educational earnings premium in the 1980?s. The paper compares the predictions of the signaling and human capital models in response to an exogenous demand shock such as a skill-biased technological change. Since the...

Lifelong learning is often promoted in ageing societies, but little is known about its returns or governments' ability to advance it. This paper evaluates the effects of a large-scale randomized field experiment issuing vouchers for adult education in Switzerland. We find no significant average...

Many countries use centralized exit exams as a governance devise of the school system. While abundant evidence suggests positive effects of central exams on achievement tests, previous research on university-bound students shows no effects on subsequent earnings. We suggest that labor-market...

Expanded international data from the PIAAC survey of adult skills allow us to analyze potential sources of the cross-country variation of comparably estimated labor-market returns to skills in a more diverse set of 32 countries. Returns to skills are systematically larger in countries that have...

In this paper we develop a simple model of the signaling value of the GED credential. The model illustrates necessary assumptions for a difference-in-difference estimator, which uses a change in the GED passing standard, to yield unbiased estimates of the signaling value of the GED for marginal...

In this paper, we exploit an exogenous change in the passing standard required to obtain a General Educational Development (GED) credential to identify the impact of the GED on the quarterly earnings of male dropouts, utilizing the Texas Schools Micro Data Panel (TSMP). These unique data contain...

This paper utilizes the self-employed to analyze the observed increase in the educational earnings premium in the 1980’s. The paper compares the predictions of the signaling and human capital models in response to an exogenous demand shock such as a skill-biased technological change. Since the...

To study whether current spending levels and public knowledge of them contribute to transatlantic differences in policy preferences, we implement parallel survey experiments in Germany and the United States. In both countries, support for increased education spending and teacher salaries falls...

Public preferences for charging tuition are important for determining higher education finance. To test whether public support for tuition depends on information and design, we devise several survey experiments in representative samples of the German electorate (N19,500). The electorate is...