New evidence confirms the conclusion of former surveys that the link between school resources and student performance is generally missing in educational production. While the conventional within-country cross-section evidence remains controversial, recent contributions which control for...

This paper studies the role of the expansion of higher education (HE) in increasing the equality of tertiary education opportunities. It examines Italy’s experience during the 1990s, when policy changes prompted HE institutions to offer a wider range of degrees and to open new sites in...

We use a unique data set about the wage distribution that Swiss students expect for themselves ex ante, deriving parametric and non-parametric measures to capture expected wage risk. These wage risk measures are unfettered by heterogeneity which handicapped the use of actual market wage...

We investigate the effect of studying abroad on international labor market mobility later in life for university graduates. As a source of identifying variation, we exploit the introduction and expansion of the European ERASMUS student exchange program, which significantly increases a...

We use Swiss data to test whether intergenerational educational mobility is affected by the age at which children first enter (primary) school. Early age at school entry significantly affects mobility and reduces the relative advantage of children of better educated parents.

We estimate a flexible dynamic model of education choices and early career employment outcomes of the French population. Individuals are allowed to choose between 4 options: continue to the next grade, accept a permanent contract, accept a temporary contract, or withdraw from the labor force (a...

In this paper, we formulate and estimate a structural model of post-schooling training that explicitly allows for possible complementarity between initial schooling levels and returns to training. Precisely, the wage outcome equation depends on accumulated schooling and on the incidence of...

This paper explores the interface between personality psychology and economics. We examine the predictive power of personality and the stability of personality traits over the life cycle. We develop simple analytical frameworks for interpreting the evidence in personality psychology and suggest...

Opponents of school vouchers often argue that school vouchers will lead to .white flight. from public schools that are disproportionately non-white, creating more racially segregated schools. In this paper, we present new evidence on whether universal vouchers will lead to a systematic departure...

This paper examines who is likely to gain and who is likely to lose under a universal voucher program. Following Epple and Romano (1998, 2003), and Nechyba (2000, 2003a), we focus on the idea that gains and losses under a universal voucher depend on two effects: changes in peer group composition...