This paper takes advantage of a recent policy experiment in Ukraine's secondary education system to study the effect of stricter requirements for proficiency in the state language on linguistic minority studentsﾒ demand for, as well as opportunities to pursue, further studies at the university...

I combine a regression discontinuity design with rich data on academic and labor market outcomes for a large sample of Florida students to identify the returns to four-year college for students on the academic margin of college admission. In addition, I develop a theoretical model of college...

We explore the forces that shape the development of aspirations and the achievement of grades during high school and the role that these aspirations, grades, and other variables play in educational outcomes such as going to university and graduating. We find that parental expectations and peer...

College students now use various forms of unsecured credit such as private student loans and credit cards to finance college. Access to these credit lines and the interest rates charged on these loans can vary significantly across credit scores. In this paper, we analyze if credit status, as...

Since 1991 more than two dozen states have adopted merit-based student financial aid programs, intended at least in part to increase the stock of human capital by improving the knowledge and skills of the state's workforce. At the same time, there has been growing concern that the U.S. is...

This paper analyzes educational choices and political support for subsidies to higher education in the presence of a time-consistency problem in income redistribution. There may be political support for so generous subsidization that it motivates the median voter to obtain higher education. As a...

Students from low-income families are eligible to student aid under the federal students' financial assistance scheme (BAfoeG) in Germany. We evaluate the effectiveness of a recent reform of student aid that substantially increased the amount received by eligible students to raise enrolment...

A common justification for HOPE-style merit-aid programs is to promote and reward academic achievement, thereby inducing greater investments in human capital. However, grade-based eligibility and retention rules encourage other behavioral responses. Using data extracted from the longitudinal...

This study examines the extent to which changing the composition of college majors among working-age population may affect the supply of human capital or effective labor supply. We use the South Korean setting, in which the population is rapidly aging, but where, despite their high educational...

We model a higher education system that admits students according to their admission signal (e.g., matriculation GPA, SAT), which is, in turn, affected by their cognitive ability and socioeconomic background. We show that subsidizing education loans increases neither human capital stock nor...