For years Georgia's HOPE Scholarship program provided full tuition scholarships to high achieving students. State budgetary shortfalls reduced its generosity in 2011. Under the new rules, only students meeting more rigorous merit-based criteria would retain the original scholarship covering full...

This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the economic contribution of unauthorized workers to the U.S. economy, and the potential gains from legalization. We employ a theoretical framework that allows for multiple industries and a heterogeneous workforce in terms of skills and...

This paper empirically analyzes the effects of immigration on the schooling decisions of natives. We employ household-level data for Spain for years 2000-2012, a period characterized by a large immigration wave and a severe recession. Our estimates reveal that Spanish households responded to...

This study quantifies the economic effects of two major immigration reforms aimed at legalizing undocumented individuals that entered the United States as children and completed high school: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the DREAM Act. The former offers only temporary legal...

Less than a decade ago, several German states introduced tuition fees for university education. Despite their comparatively low level, fees were perceived by the public to increase social injustice, and have been abolished. Whereas other studies have shown no effect on enrollment, we analyze the...

In our current challenging budgetary environment, school closures remain a potentially attractive choice. With a large panel of Illinois schools from 1991 to 2005, I investigate which factors contribute to school closures. Among elementary schools, declining enrolments and rural locations...

Several German states recently introduced tuition fees for university education. We investigate whether these tuition fees influence the mobility of university applicants. Based on administrative data of applicants for medical schools in Germany, we estimate the effect of tuition fees on the...

This paper employs a rich collection of survey and administrative datasets, including linked school-teacher payroll data, to document the reform of teacher compensation and school network implemented in Latvia amidst the economic crisis of 2008-2010, immediately after territorial reform. We...

A large school consolidation reform in the Netherlands changed minimum school size rules underlying public funding. The supply of schools decreased by 15 percent, but this varied considerably across municipalities. We find that reducing the number of schools by 10 percent increases pupils'...

This paper analyzes the effects of immigration on the education system of the receiving country from a political economy perspective. Specifically, we extend the school-choice model by Epple and Romano (1996b) and Coen-Pirani (2011) by incorporating a subsidy to private schools, a distinguishing...