Despite important policy implications associated with the allocation of education resources, evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive. In part, this is due to endogenous allocation; families sort themselves non-randomly into school districts and school districts...

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...

Many empirical studies specify outcomes as a linear function of endogenous regressors when conducting instrumental variable (IV) estimation. We show that tests for treatment effects, selection bias, and treatment effect heterogeneity are biased if the true relationship is non-linear. These...

This paper uses a rich Norwegian dataset to re-examine the causal relationship between family income and child outcomes. Motivated by theoretical predictions and OLS results that suggest a nonlinear relationship, we depart from previous studies in allowing the marginal effects on children’s...

Using a comprehensive administrative database we exploit independent quasi-experimental methods to estimate the effect of class size on student achievement in Norway. The first method is based on a maximum class size rule in the spirit Angrist and Lavy (1999). The second method exploits...

A variety of public campaigns, including the "Just Say No" campaign of the 1980s and 1990s that encouraged teenagers to "Just Say No to Drugs", are based on the premise that teenagers are very susceptible to peer influences. Despite this, very little is known about the effect of school peers on...

This paper exploits discontinuous grade mixing rules in Norwegian junior high schools to estimate how classroom grade composition affects pupil achievement. Pupils in mixed grade classrooms are found to outperform pupils in single grade classrooms on high stake central exit tests and teacher set...

We study the relationship between age and literacy skills in Canada, Norway and the U.S. &- countries that represent a wide range of literacy outcomes - using data from the 1994 and 2003 International Adult Literacy Surveys. In cross-sectional data there is a weak negative partial relationship...

We study the impact on children of increasing maternity leave benefits using a reform that increased paid and unpaid maternity leave in Norway in July 1977. Mothers giving birth before this date were eligible only for 12 weeks of unpaid leave, while those giving birth after were entitled to 4...

Massive cross-sectional evidence exists indicating that children of more educated parents outperform their schoolmates. However, evidence for causal interpretation of this association is weak. We examine a causal relationship using two approaches for identification within the same data: cousins...