Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. Using the largest available sample of lotteried applicants to charter schools, we explore student-level and school-level explanations for this...

School choice may allow schools to impede access to students perceived as costlier to educate. To test this, we sent emails from fictitious parents to 6,452 charter schools and traditional public schools subject to school choice in 29 states and Washington, D.C. The fictitious parent asked...

This paper examines the family income?college enrollment relationship and the evidence on credit constraints in post-secondary schooling. We distinguish short-run liquidity constraints from the long-term factors that promote cognitive and noncognitive ability. Long-run factors crystallized in...

The decision to attend university is influenced by the balance of the expected returns and costs of attending university, by liquidity constraints and capital market imperfections that may modify these calculations and, hence, by the family income of prospective students. Family circumstances...

This paper examines the determinants of the choice of the major when the length of studies is uncertain, by using a framework in which students entering post-secondary education are assumed to anticipate their future earnings. For that purpose, we use French data coming from the 1992 and 1998...

The Swedish adult education program known as the Knowledge Lift is unprecedented in its size and scope, aiming to raise the skill level of all low-skilled workers towards the medium level. This paper evaluates the effects of program participation on individual labor market outcomes, notably...

This paper develops and applies a method for decomposing cross section variability of earnings into components that are forecastable at the time students decide to go to college (heterogeneity) and components that are unforecastable. About 60% of variability in returns to schooling is...

The 1973 Raising of the School Leaving Age in England and Wales has been used to identify returns to years' schooling. However, the reform affected the proportion with qualifications, as well as schooling length. To shed light on whether the returns reflect extra schooling or qualifications, we...

A number of studies have shown that education reforms extending compulsory schooling reduce criminal behavior of those affected by the reform. We consider the effects of a major Swedish educational reform on crime by exploiting its staggered implementation across Sweden. We first show that the...