The evidence for the effects of early childhood education on risky behavior in adolescence is limited. This paper studies the consequences of a reform of a large-scale universal kindergarten program in Japan. Exploiting a staggered expansion of kindergartens across regions, we estimate the...

In deliberating whether to pursue an undergraduate education in the US, a foreign student takes into consideration the expected probability of securing US employment after graduation. The H-1B visa provides a primary means of legal employment for collegeeducated foreign-nationals. In October...

In deliberating whether to pursue an undergraduate education in the US, a foreign student takes into consideration the expected probability of securing US employment after graduation. The H-1B visa provides a primary means of legal employment for collegeeducated foreign-nationals. In October...

In this paper, we study the determinants and consequences of educational and occupational aspirations. Basing our enquiry on the British NCDS 1958 cohort data, we assess the importance of aspirations for social mobility above and beyond other established determinants. We document educational and...

Because accountability may improve the comparability that is compromised by lenient grading, we compare exit exam outcomes in the same schools before and after a policy change that increased teacher accountability by anchoring grading scales. In particular, using a large administrative dataset...

We estimate month-of-birth effects on cognitive and noncognitive skills, as well as factors relevant to skill formation. Our estimates indicate that younger students in a given grade cohort have lower cognitive and noncognitive skills. To shed light on the underlying mechanisms, we also examine...

We use administrative panel data on about a quarter of a million students in the German state of Hesse to estimate the causal effect of class size on school tracking outcomes after elementary school.Our identification strategy relies on the quasi-random assignment of students to different class...

Although school integration of the children of economic migrants in developed countries is well-studied in the literature, little evidence based on large-scale representative data exists on the school integration of refugee children - many of whom live in low- or middle-income countries. This...

This paper investigates the economic returns to language skills and bilingualism. The analysis is staged in Kazakhstan, a multi-ethnic country with complex ethnic settlement patterns that has switched its official state language from Russian to Kazakh. Using two newly assembled data sets, we...

This paper investigates the economic returns to language skills and bilingualism. The analysis is staged in Kazakhstan, a multi-ethnic country with complex ethnic settlement patterns that has switched its official state language from Russian to Kazakh. Using two newly assembled data sets, we...