Talented individuals are seen as drivers of long-term growth, but how do they realize their full potential? In this paper, I show that even in a group of high-IQ men and women, lifetime earnings are substantially influenced by their education and personality traits. I identify a previously...

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...

The prevalence and stability of marriage has declined in the United States as the economic lives of men and women have converged. Family change has not been uniform, however, and the widening gaps in marital status, relationship stability, and childbearing between socioeconomic groups raise...

In this paper we examine a range of postsecondary education and labor market outcomes, with a particular focus on minorities and/or disadvantaged workers. We use administrative data from the state of Florida, where postsecondary student records have been linked to UI earnings data and also to...

This article reviews empirical evidence on the early tracking system in Germany and the educational inequalities associated with it. Overall, the literature confirms the existence of considerable social, ethnic, gender- and age-related inequalities in secondary school track placement. Studies on...

We study an intensive math instruction policy that assigned low-skilled 9th graders to an algebra course that doubled instructional time, altered peer composition and emphasized problem solving skills. A regression discontinuity design shows substantial positive impacts of double-dose algebra on...

How does measured performance at university affect labor market outcomes? We show that degree class - a coarse measure of student performance used in the UK - causally affects graduates' industry and hence expected wages. To control for unobserved ability, we employ a regression discontinuity...

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children. We estimate production functions for cognitive and socio-emotional skills as a function of...

This paper estimates the effect of exposure to teacher pay-for-performance programs on adult outcomes. We construct a comprehensive data set of schools which have implemented teacher performance pay programs across the United States since 1986, and use our data to calculate the fraction of...

The gap in university enrollment by parental education is large and persistent in many countries. In our representative survey, 74 percent of German university graduates, but only 36 percent of those without a university degree favor a university education for their children. The latter are more...