Recent research has shown that females make classrooms more conducive to effective learning. We identify the effect of a higher share of female classmates on students' disruptive behavior, engagement, test scores, and major choices in disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged schools. We exploit the...

Using Greek administrative data, we examine the impact of being randomly assigned to a classroom with a same-gender top-performing student on both short- and long-term educational outcomes. These top performers are tasked with keeping classroom attendance records, which positions them as role...

As the time of leaving school determines the level of academic achievement this timing decision is central for the human capital investment decision. Real option theory offers a new perspective of the human capital investment decision under uncertainty and irreversibility. Unlike other...

Between 1972 and 1978 U.S. high schools rapidly increased their female athletic participation rates - to approximately the same level as their male athletic participation rates - in order to comply with Title IX, a policy change that provides a unique quasi-experiment in female athletic...

An emerging economic literature over the past decade has made use of international tests of educational achievement to analyze the determinants and impacts of cognitive skills. The cross-country comparative approach provides a number of unique advantages over national studies: It can exploit...

This paper provides evidence on the socioeconomic gradient in dropout and progression in upper secondary education in Norway. Using a rich data set covering all students transferring from compulsory education to upper secondary education in 2002, we find that student achievement at the end of...

When information about the true abilities of job-seekers and applicants are hard to get, statistical discrimination by employers can be an efficient strategy in the hiring and wage setting process. But statistical discrimination can induce costs, if labor relations cannot be terminated in the...

We propose a signaling model of student enrollment dynamics based on probabilities of completion of studies, under different rationality assumptions. There are two types of students and two schools. School of graduation serves as a signal of student productivity to prospective employers. The...

The central vs. local nature of high-school exit exam systems can have important repercussions on the labor market. By increasing the informational content of grades, central exams may improve the sorting of students by productivity. To test this, we exploit the unique German setting where...

How do alternative job opportunities affect teacher quality? We provide the first causal evidence on this question by exploiting business cycle conditions at career start as a source of exogenous variation in the outside options of potential teachers. Unlike prior research, we directly assess...