We characterize intergenerational mobility in Germany using census data on educational attainment and parental income for 526,000 children. Our measure of educational attainment is the A-Level degree, a requirement for access to university. A 10 percentile increase in the parental income rank is...

This paper estimates the effects of family-background characteristics on student performance in the US and 17 Western European school systems. Family background has strong effects both in Europe and the United States, remarkably similar in size. France and Flemish Belgium achieve the most...

We estimate the impact of a large curriculum reform in Switzerland that substantially increased the share of foreign language classes in compulsory school on students' subsequent educational choices in upper secondary school. Using administrative student register data and exploiting the...

It is recognised that expressive preferences may play a major role in determining voting decisions because the low probability of being decisive in elections undermines standard instrumental reasoning. Expressive and instrumental preferences may deviate and in electoral settings it is more...

This paper exploits a 2018 reform of teachers' financial incentives to work in some French disadvantaged schools. Based on this quasi-natural experiment, it evaluates the impact of those incentives on teachers' stated preferences to move to such schools. Using data from the internal human...

We examine the association between the personality trait grit and post-compulsory educational choices and trajectories using a large survey linked to administrative student register data. Exploiting cross sectional variation in students' self-reported grit in the last year of compulsory school,...