Decentralization of decision-making is among the most intriguing recent school reforms, in part because countries went in opposite directions over the past decade and because prior evidence is inconclusive. We suggest that autonomy may be conducive to student achievement in well-developed...

We explore the extent to which starting primary school earlier by up to one year can help shield children from the detrimental, long-term developmental consequences of having an ill or disabled sibling. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, we employ a Regression...

Gender differences in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines are widespread in most OECD countries and mathematics is the only subject where typically girls tend to underperform with respect to boys. This paper describes the gender gap in math test scores in Italy,...

Public schooling in the U.S. has numerous critics, many of whom suggest that alternatives such as providing vouchers for private schools may be more effective. This paper combines decennial census and American Community Survey data for various years to examine the relationship between...

This study examines whether hurricanes have any impact on performance in standardized examinations. The analysis uses a panel of thirteen Caribbean countries and over 800 schools for the period 1993 through 2010. In particular, the effect on subjects in the humanities and sciences are examined....

A key concern in the design of education policies relates to the structure of incentives in accountability systems. This paper examines a school accountability program that provides financial support to low-performing schools but has no direct punishment scheme for recipients who do not exhibit...

This paper examines the causal effects of Catholic schooling on educational attainment. Using a novel instrumental-variable approach that exploits an exogenous shock to the Catholic school system, we show that the positive correlation between Catholic schooling and student outcomes is explained...

We examine the effect of a gifted and talented program in academic secondary education. Students are assigned based on a cutoff score in a cognitive aptitude test, which we exploit in a fuzzy regression discontinuity framework to identify program effects. We find that assigned students obtain...

In recent years, in Italy, a larger number of students have chosen to attend vocational hospitality and catering schools. This paper investigates the extent to which this increase may have been triggered by the growing popularity of the cooking reality show MasterChef, in which the chef...

Despite intense public interest in keeping guns out of schools, next to nothing is known about the effects of gun control policies on youth gun carrying or school violence. Using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS) for the period 1993-2013, this study is the first to examine the...