In Turkey, as in many other countries, female students perform better in high school and have higher test scores than males. Nevertheless, men still predominate at highly selective programs that lead to high-paying careers. The gender gap at elite schools is particularly puzzling because college...

The total social benefits of college education exceed the private benefits because the government receives a share of the monetary returns in the form of income taxes. We study the policy implications of this fiscal externality in an optimal dynamic tax framework. Using a variational approach we...

In 2014, the government of Colombia launched a unique meanstested and merit-based scholarship program called Ser Pilo Paga. We examine the effects of this scholarship on student performance on the country's university exit exam and other educational outcomes. Exploiting thresholds for...

This paper studies how a student's ordinal rank in a peer group affects performance and specialisation choices in university. By exploiting data with repeated random assignment of students to teaching sections, we find that a higher rank increases performance and the probability of choosing...

To boost college graduation rates, policymakers often advocate for academic supports such as coaching or mentoring. Proactive and intensive coaching interventions are effective, but are costly and difficult to scale. We evaluate a relatively lower-cost group coaching program targeted at...

This paper studies the effect of income tax progressivity on the disproportionate usage of publicly funded higher education. We develop a rational choice model showing that more progressive tax systems increase poorer households' net fiscal benefit, making their children more likely to attend...

We find robust evidence that cohorts of graduates who enter college during worse economic times earn higher average wages than those who enter during better times. This difference is not explained by differences in economic conditions at the time of college graduation, changes in field of study...