This paper studies the extent to which young children develop their cognitive ability in high and low quality schools. We use a representative panel data set containing cognitive test scores of 4-6 year olds in Dutch schools. School quality is measured by the school's average achievement test...

We study the effects of grade retention on secondary school performance by considering a change in Colombia's educative legislation. In 2010, the rule that forced schools to retain up to a 5% of students was abolished. Exploiting variation in schools' retention rates in a...

Free school choice has often been argued to be a tide that lifts school quality through increased competition. This paper analyzes the underlying assumption that school quality is an important choice criterion for parents. Using a large and representative data set of over 15,000 Dutch primary...

Free school choice has often been argued to be a tide that lifts school quality through increased competition. This paper analyzes the underlying assumption that school quality is an important choice criterion for parents. Using a large and representative data set of over 15,000 Dutch primary...

Intergenerational mobility is often studied using survey data. In such settings, selective unit or item non-response may bias estimates. Linking Dutch survey data to administrative income data allows us to examine whether selective responses bias the estimated relationship between parental...

We investigate the stages of childhood at which parental job loss is most consequential for their child's education. Using Danish administrative data linking parents experiencing plant closures to their children, we compare end-of-school outcomes to matched peers and to closures hitting after...

We propose a twin family model linking twins with their spouses and children to quantify the relative importance of genetic and environmental factors in explaining the variance of socio-economic outcomes. Using data from the Danish Twins Registry and population registers, we test and relax the...

In elementary school, girls typically outperform boys in languages and boys typically outperform girls in math. The determinants of these differences have remained largely unexplored. Using rich data from Dutch elementary schools, we decompose the differences in achievement into gender...

We study how native-immigrant (second generation) differences in educational trajectories and school-to-work transitions vary by gender. Using longitudinal Belgian data and adjusting for family background and educational sorting, we find that both male and female second-generation immigrants,...

We study the contribution of parental similarity in schooling levels to the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. We develop an empirical model for educational correlations within the family in which parental sorting can translate into intergenerational transmission, or...