Local school districts often stagger daily start times for their schools in order to reduce busing costs. This paper uses data on all middle school students in Wake County, NC from 1999 to 2006 to identify the causal effect of daily start times on academic performance. Using variation in start...

Using detailed individual-level data from public universities in the state of Ohio, I estimate the effect of various institutional expenditures on the probability of graduating from college. Using a competing risks regression framework, I find differential impacts of expenditure categories...

This paper examines the impact of the implementation of a universal free school breakfast policy on meals program participation, attendance, and academic achievement. In 2003, New York City made school breakfast free for all students regardless of income, while increasing the price of lunch for...

A growing number of students around the world receive private tutoring in academic subjects. Such tutoring is widely called shadow education because it mimics regular schooling as the school sector grows, so does the shadow; and as the curriculum in the school changes, so does the curriculum in...

In this paper we confirm the universality of steadily rising education expenditures among OECD nations, as predicted by “Baumol and Bowen's cost disease”, and show that this trajectory of costs can be expected to continue for the foreseeable future. However, we find that while the level of...

We investigate how the benefits of publicly financed higher education in Turkey are distributed among students with different socioeconomic backgrounds. We use a dataset from a nationally representative sample of university entrance exam takers together with data on government subsidies to...

We carry out a randomized experiment involving undergraduate students enrolled at an Italian University attending two introductory economics classes to evaluate the impact on achievement of examination frequency and interim feedback provision. Students in the treated group were allowed to...

Unobserved ability heterogeneity has long been postulated to play a key role in human capital development. Traditional strategies to estimate education production functions do not allow for varying role or development of unobserved ability as a child ages. Such restrictions are highly...

Using the Thai PISA 2009 literacy test, this paper offers two contributions to the literature on the achievement gap between students in urban and rural areas. The first contribution relates to the estimation of the student-level education production function at different points along the...

This study analyzes school dropout in rural Guatemala using event history data and unusually detailed data on schools and teachers. Significant results for language of instruction, teacher education and fighting between students demonstrate the importance of accounting for school context...