Facing substantial financial pressure, many districts close schools in order to preserve solvency and improve student outcomes. Using a new longitudinal data set on all non-Cook County Illinois schools, we examine the determinants of high school closure decisions from 1991 through 2005. Our...

There is a well established socioeconomic gradient in educational attainment, despite much effort in recent decades to address this inequality. This study evaluates a university access program that provides financial, academic and social support to low socioeconomic status (SES) students using a...

The starting point of this paper is a widely shared fundamental preference according to which Hungary should follow a fast, sustainable development path and catch up with the developed world in the foreseeable future. Questions raised in this paper are related to the instrumental preferences....

Empirical analyses for the US suggest that stronger people's control over the school budget is deleterious to student performance. Using Swiss data on ninth graders in mathematics, reading and natural science collected jointly with the PISA study 2000, this paper tests this hypothesis for...

This paper looks at the efficiency implications of differences in secondary school design. The key aspect we focus on is the degree of differentiation between vocational and general education. Using a simple model of endogenous job composition, we study the interaction between relative demand...