Taxation changes the expectations of prospective university students about their future level and uncertainty of after-tax income. To estimate the impact of taxes on university enrollment, we develop and estimate a structural microeconometric model, in which a high-school graduate decides to...

In dieser Studie werden auf der Basis einer Weiterentwicklung des ZEW Mikrosimulationsmodells des Abgaben- Steuer- und Transfersystems fiskalische und individuelle Nettoerträge und Renditen von Bildungsinvestitionen für junge Erwachsene bezogen auf das Jahr 2016 untersucht und mit früheren...

We study whether raising instructional time can crowd out student pro-social behaviour. To this end, we exploit a large educational reform in Germany that has raised weekly instructional time for high school students by 12.5% as a quasi-natural experiment. We find that this rise has a negative...

A large literature aims to establish a causal link between education and health using changes in compulsory schooling laws. It is however unclear how well more education is operationalized by marginal increases in school years. We shed a new light on this discussion by analyzing the health...

This paper investigates two mechanisms through which education may affect cognitive skills in adolescence: the role of instructional quantity and the timing ofinstruction with respect to age. To identify causal effects, I exploit a school reform carried out at the state level in Germany as a...

This paper investigates the short-term effects of a reduction in the length of high school on students' personality traits using a school reform carried out at the state level in Germany as a quasi-natural experiment. Starting in 2001, academic-track high school (Gymnasium) was reduced from nine...

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...

Proponents of tracking argue that the creation of more homogeneous classes increases effciency while opponents point out that tracking aggravates initial differences between students. We estimate the effects on the intergenerational transmission of education of a reform that delayed tracking by...

This paper studies the effect of attending a high-quality secondary school on subsequent educational outcomes. The analysis is based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study in which we observe children when they make their secondary school choice (between ages 10-12) and later when...

Risk aversion might affect current and potential teachers' reaction to reforms, in particular payment reforms. However, evidence on teachers' risk aversion in comparison to other occupations is limited. The present study is based on twelve waves of a representative German data set (N = 18,381)...