A student’s future log-wage is given by the sum of a skill premium and a random personal “ability” term. Students observe only a private, noisy signal of their ability, and universities can condition admission decisions on the results of noisy tests. We assume first that universities are...

The paper studies the contribution of human capital on economic growth through its impact on the rate of innovation by formulating an endogenous growth model that combines elements from Romer (1990), Aghion and Howitt (1992), and van Zon and Yetkiner (2003). Using a relatively broad concept of...

In this paper, the relationship between the school attendance decision and economic incentives is investigated using data from Zambia. A logit model for school attendance is estimated, and it is found that school attendance is not particularly sensitive to changes in costs, quality, or poverty....

Two alternative models of parental investments in children's human capital are considered and tested empirically using the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS). The pure loan model and the reciprocity with two-sided altruism model yield different predictions about the effect of children's...

A state monopoly in schooling followed the collapse of communism in Central Europe. The centrally planned system was abandoned. Systems comparable with educational voucher scheme, also known as school choice system, were introduced in the Czech Republic and Hungary in the early 1990s. The newly...

This paper reports about a randomized field experiment in which first year economics and business students at the University of Amsterdam could earn financial rewards for passing the first year requirements within one year. Participants were assigned to a high, low and zero (control) reward...

A model of education where the distribution of innate abilities is the source of heterogeneity is investigated. Public and private education models are investigated and compared. Human capital follows a first order Markov process which is shown to converge to a unique stationary distribution in...

It is well known that higher education financing involves uncertainty and risk with respect to students’ future economic fortunes, and an unwillingness of banks to provide loans because of the absence of collateral. It follows that without government intervention there will be both socially...

Rising costs of and returns to college have led to sizeable increases in the demand for student loans in many countries. In the U.S., student loan default rates have also risen for recent cohorts as labor market uncertainty and debt levels have increased. We discuss these trends as well as...

Lottery estimates suggest oversubscribed urban charter schools boost student achievement markedly. But these estimates needn’t capture treatment effects for students who haven’t applied to charter schools or for students attending charters for which demand is weak. This paper reports...