We use administrative panel data on about a quarter of a million students in the German state of Hesse to estimate the causal effect of class size on school tracking outcomes after elementary school. Our identification strategy relies on the quasi-random assignment of students to different class...

We use Swiss data to test whether intergenerational educational mobility is affected by the age at which children first enter (primary) school. Early age at school entry significantly affects mobility and reduces the relative advantage of children of better educated parents

Many countries provide extra resources to schools serving disadvantaged pupils. We exploit a discontinuity in the assignment of such personnel subsidies in Flanders to estimate the impact on cognitive outcomes via a regression discontinuity (RD) design. Because bias can be substantial in RD...

Exploiting a unique policy reform in Egypt that reduced the number of years of compulsory schooling, we show how it unexpectedly increased education attainment as more students chose to complete the next school stage. This impact is almost entirely driven by girls from more disadvantaged...

This paper analyzes the impact of longer school schedules on children's 2nd grade reading comprehension skills in Chile. In a setting where families choose schools, we identify the causal effect of longer schedules with instrumental variables, using the local availability of full-day schools as...

We study whether early tracking of students based on ability increases migrant-native achievement gaps. To eliminate confounding impacts of unobserved country traits, we employ a differences-in-differences strategy that exploits international variation in the age of tracking as well as student...

This study reports evidence from an unusual policy intervention – The Reaching Out of School Children (ROSC) project – in Bangladesh where school grants and education allowances are offered to attract hard-to-reach children to schools comprised of a single teacher and a classroom. The...

In the large empirical literature that investigates the causal effects of education on outcomes such as health, wages and crime, it is customary to measure education with years of schooling, and to identify these effects using the exogenous variation provided by school reforms increasing...

Cross-country evidence on student achievement might be hampered by omitted country characteristics such as language or legal differences. This paper uses cross-state variation in Germany, whose sixteen states share the same language and legal system, but pursue different education policies. The...

Over the last decades the German education system underwent numerous reforms in order to improve equality of opportunity, i.e. to guarantee all pupils equal access to higher education. At the same time internationally comparative evidence yields that Germany features particularly low...