Secondary schools in the developed world differ in the degree of differentiation and in the first age of selection of pupils into different tracks. In this paper, we account for the heterogeneity of tracking time with a simple stochastic model which conjugates the returns from specialization...

Choice and competition in education have found growing support from both policy makers and academics in the recent past. Yet, evidence on the actual benefits of market-oriented reforms is at best mixed. Moreover, while the economic rationale for choice and competition is clear, in existing work...

A growing body of research highlights the importance of non-cognitive skills as determinants of young people's cognitive outcomes at school. However, little evidence exists about the effects of policies that specifically target students' non-cognitive skills as a way to improve educational...

Despite being central to government education policy in many countries, there remains considerable debate about whether resources matter for pupil outcomes. In this paper we look at this question by considering an English education policy initiative Excellence in Cities which has been a flagship...

Using data from 12 European countries and the variation across countries and over time in the changes of minimum school leaving age, we study the effects of the quantity of education on the distribution of earnings. We find that compulsory school reforms significantly affect educational...

Even though some countries track students into differing-ability schools by age 10, others keep their entire secondary-school system comprehensive. To estimate the effects of such institutional differences in the face of country heterogeneity, we employ an international...

This study reports evidence from an unusual policy intervention – The Reaching Out of School Children (ROSC) project – in Bangladesh where school grants and education allowances are offered to attract hard-to-reach children to schools comprised of a single teacher and a classroom. The...

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) are programs under which poor families get a stipend provided they keep their children in school and take them for health checks. While there is significant evidence showing that they have positive impacts on school participation, little is known about their...

Lack of adequate childcare is a main reason women cite for not participating in the labor force. We investigate the effect of a reform that lengthened school schedules from half to full days in Chile - essentially providing zero-cost childcare - on different maternal labor participation...

A growing number of American states require that students who do not demonstrate basic reading proficiency at the end of third grade be retained and provided with remedial services. We exploit a discontinuity in the probability of third grade retention under Florida's test-based promotion policy...