We examine how political institutions influence health expenditure by using a panel of 151 developing and developed countries for the years 2000 to 2015 and four measures of democracy. Our pooled OLS analysis shows that democracies have 20-30% higher government health expenditure relative to GDP...

Displaced children often face educational disadvantages in their host countries. Statelessness might be one of the factors limiting educational access, but research on this aspect is limited. In this paper, I leverage the introduction of birthright citizenship for Venezuelan children in Colombia...

Most industrialized countries have increased access to abortion over the past 30 years. Economic theory predicts that abortion laws affect sexual behavior since they change the marginal cost of having risky sex. We use gonorrhea incidence as a metric of risky sexual behavior. Using a panel of 41...

We study the effect of preschool attendance on secondary school track choice in Germany which is a crucial outcome that largely predicts educational pathways of children. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, multivariate models show a significant positive association between years of...

States merge small and medium sized municipalities to achieve economies of scale.Little is known to which extent mergers of large local governments reduce expenditures.I use the synthetic control method to identify the effect of mergers of county-sizedadministrations in Germany (districts) on...

How did the introduction of the Bachelor-degree system affect students in Germany? Combining rich data on university students with administrative data on universities' study programs, we exploit variation in the timing of Bachelor-degree implementation across departments. To account for...

The accession of Eastern European countries to the European Union increased family wealth and the returns to schooling. I analyze the change in student achievement due to the EU accession of Eastern Europe building on a panel of six PISA waves covering more than 1 million students in 32...

The ifo Education Survey is a representative opinion survey of the German voting-age population on education topics that has been conducted annually since 2014. It covers public preferences on a wide range of education policy issues ranging from early childhood education, schools, and...