Modern societies would potentially reap large benefits from upgrading low skilled's education. However, this is difficult to put into practice because employers are reluctant to train low skilled and because low skilled are unwilling to participate. To circumvent this potential market...

This article argues that resource expansion can fail to improve actual student performance because it might cause educators to soften grading standards (i.e., induce grade inflation). Our theoretical model shows that, depending on schools’ and students’ reactions to resource changes, the...

This paper presents evidence from a randomized field experiment testing the impact of a 3-year matched savings program on educational outcomes 10 years after the start of the experiment. We examine the effect of an Individual Development Account (IDA) program on (1) educational enrollment, (2)...

We propose a methodology for evaluating educational performance, from a multilevel perspective. We use partial frontier approaches to mitigate the influence of outliers and the curse of dimensionality. Our estimation considers idiosyncratic variables at the school, class, and student levels. Our...

Numerous studies have examined the enrollment responses of traditional undergraduate students to the introduction of government-provided tuition subsidies, but far less attention has been devoted to the elasticity of demand for graduate education. This paper examines how the tax code and...

We investigate the relative merits of unconditional cash transfers (UCT), conditional cash transfers (CCT), and the effects of improvements in education quality on efficiency and welfare. In our setting, some parents underinvest in their children's education because capital market imperfections...

The post-communist Czech Republic provides a laboratory in which to investigate possible responses to the adoption of universal education vouchers. Private schools appear to have arisen in response to distinct market incentives. They are more common in fields where public school inertia has...

Nineteen percent of 1997–98 North Carolina 3rd graders were observed to drop out of high school. A series of logits predict probabilities of dropping out on determinants such as math and reading test scores, absenteeism, suspension, and retention, at the following grade levels: 3rd, 5th, 8th,...

We estimate the impact of increases in Federal student aid and higher education funding, such as the recently proposed American Graduation Initiative (AGI), on the outcomes of community colleges, including enrollments, list and average tuitions, and educational quality. We develop a reduced form...

Can changes in teacher pay encourage more able individuals to enter the teaching profession? So far, studies of the impact of pay on the aptitude distribution of teachers have provided mixed evidence on the extent to which altering teacher salaries represents a feasible solution to the teacher...