A large school consolidation reform in the Netherlands changed minimum school size rules underlying public funding. The supply of schools decreased by 15 percent, but this varied considerably across municipalities. We find that reducing the number of schools by 10 percent increases pupils'...

This paper surveys the economics literature on overeducation. The original motivation to study this topic were reports that the strong increase in the number of college graduates in the early 1970s in the US led to a decrease in the returns to college education. We argue that Duncan and...

In this paper we investigate how heterogeneous agents choose among tournaments with different prizes. We show that if the number of agents is sufficiently small, multiple equilibria can arise. Depending on how the prize money is split over the tournaments, these may include, for example, a...

This study presents quasi-experimental estimates of the effect of expanding early schooling enrollment possibilities on early achievement. It exploits two features of the school system in Holland. The first is rolling admissions; children are allowed start school immediately after their 4th...

We exploit admission lotteries to estimate the payoffs to the dentistry study in the Netherlands. Using data from up to 22 years after the lottery, we find that in most years after graduation dentists earn around 50,000 Euros more than they would earn in their next-best profession. The payoff is...

This paper estimates peer effects originating from the ability composition of tutorial groups for undergraduate students in economics. We manipulated the composition of groups to achieve a wide range of support, and assigned students – conditional on their ability – randomly. The data...

Using a comprehensive administrative database we exploit independent quasi-experimental methods to estimate the effect of class size on student achievement in Norway. The first method is based on a maximum class size rule in the spirit Angrist and Lavy (1999). The second method exploits...

This paper exploits discontinuous grade mixing rules in Norwegian junior high schools to estimate how classroom grade composition affects pupil achievement. Pupils in mixed grade classrooms are found to outperform pupils in single grade classrooms on high stake central exit tests and teacher set...

Does internet use trigger sex crime? We use unique Norwegian data on crime and internet adoption to shed light on this question. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband access points in 2000-2008, and provides plausibly exogenous variation in internet use. Our instrumental...

How does class size in compulsory school affect peoples' long run education and earnings? We use maximum class size rules and Norwegian administrative registries allowing us to observe outcomes up to age 48. We do not find any indication of beneficial effects of class size reduction in...