This paper makes use of newly linked administrative data to better understand the determinants of higher education participation amongst individuals from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. It is unique in being able to follow two cohorts of students in England – those who took GCSEs...

We estimate a dynamic model of schooling on two cohorts of the NLSY and find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the effects of real (as opposed to relative) family income on education have practically vanished between the early 1980's and the early 2000's. After conditioning on a cognitive...

Student attendance is both a critical input and intermediate output of the education production function. However, the malleable classroom-level determinants of student attendance are poorly understood. We estimate the causal effect of class size and observable teacher qualifications on student...

We model the joint distribution of (i) individual education trajectories, defined by the allocation of time (semesters) between various combinations of school enrollment with different labor supply modalities and periods of school interruption devoted either to employment or home production and...

We analyze the role of distance from a university in the decision to attend higher education in Germany. Students who live near a university can avoid moving and the increased living expenses by commuting. Thus, transaction cost arguments would suggest that the greater the distance to the...

Past estimates of the effect of family income on child development have often been plagued by endogeneity and measurement error. In this paper, we use an instrumental variables strategy to estimate the causal effect of income on children's math and reading achievement. Our identification derives...

The choice of a college major plays a critical role in determining the future earnings of college graduates. Students make their college major decisions in part due to the future earnings streams associated with the different majors. We survey students about what their expected earnings would be...

Credible evidence from a variety of contexts suggests that student absences harm academic achievement. However, extant studies focus entirely on the average effects of student absences, and how those average effects vary by student, school, and absence type. This paper enhances our understanding...

This paper looks at horizontal sex segregation in education as a factor contributing to gender segregation in the labor market. Economic theories fail to explain why women with the same years of schooling and educational attainment as men are under-represented in many technical degrees, which...

We use unique retrospective family background data from the 2003 British Household Panel Survey to explore the degree to which family size and birth order affect a child's subsequent educational attainment. Theory suggests a trade off between child quantity and 'quality'. Family size might...