How can the labor-market prospects of school-attending adolescents from disadvantaged families be improved? One possible approach is the use of mentoring programs that assign adolescents a mentor who can provide them with support that their family environment is not able to provide. But do such...

For school children, the Covid-19 pandemic brought school closures that challenged their learning experiences and social-distancing rules that impeded their peer interactions. Will these experiences have persistent effects on the development of children's cognitive and socio-emotional skills? We...

Being exposed to compulsory religious education in school can have long-run consequences for students' lives. At different points in time since the 1970s, German states terminated compulsory religious education in public schools and replaced it by a choice between ethics classes and religious...

The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of cognitive skills in promoting economic well-being, with a particular...

Policy debates about the balance of vocational and general education programs focus on the school-to-work transition. But with rapid technological change, gains in youth employment from vocational education may be offset by less adaptability and thus diminished employment later in life. To test...

An important element in considering school finance policies is that households are not passive but instead respond to policies. Household behavior is especially important in considering how households affect the spatial structure of metropolitan areas where different jurisdictions incorporate...

We provide evidence that the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth reflects a causal effect of cognitive skills and supports the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking student achievement across countries, over...