We examine how selected high school characteristics – including type of diploma – contribute to students' academic success in an American-type university in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). We find no robust evidence that US, UK, and UAE systems of high school diploma produce different...

This study investigates how being exposed to a field of study influences students' major choices. We exploit a natural experiment at a Swiss university where all first-year students face largely the same curriculum before they choose a major. An important component of the first-year curriculum...

This paper examines the nature and drivers of Vietnam's paradoxical performance in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) – consistently high student achievement despite being the poorest of all participating countries and a centralized education system. We first document...

The external circumstances for universities have been changing rapidly. In order to be competitive, survive, and flourish, universities have shown a growing enthusiasm to generate financial revenues externally. The literature refers to this phenomenon as academic capitalism, defined as the...

Over the last decade, many countries have experienced dramatic increases in university enrolment, which, when not matched by compensating increases in other inputs, have resulted in larger class sizes. Using administrative records from a leading UK university, we present evidence on the effects...

This paper analyzes the impact of a leading entrepreneurship education program on college students' entrepreneurship competencies and intentions using an instrumental variables approach in a difference-in-differences framework. We exploit that the program was offered to students at one location...

This paper uses the synthetic control method to look at how the L'Aquila earthquake affected subsequent enrolment at the local university. Such an issue is closely related to the economic consequences caused by this event given the large contribution made by the university to the local economy...

Strategic incentives may lead to inefficient and unequal provision of public services. A prominent example is school admissions. Existing research shows that applicants "play the system" by submitting school rankings strategically. We investigate whether applicants also play the system by...

Our study focuses on exploring the impact of air pollution on household investment in children's education in China. Air pollution poses a significant risk to some cities in northern China. We have used panel data from secondary schools in Shandong Province in 2017 and 2020 and discovered that a...

Public policies often target individuals but within-family externalities of such interventions are understudied. Using a regression discontinuity design, we document how a third grade retention policy affects both the target children and their younger siblings. The policy improves test scores of...