The German schooling system selects children into different secondary school tracks already at a very early stage in life. School track choice heavily influences choices and opportunities later in life. It has often been observed that secondary schooling achievements display a strong correlation...

The 1993 Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a representative survey of the Italian population covering 24,000 individuals, reports detailed information on children attendance of public and private schools and parents? self-assessment of the quality of public schools in the city of residence....

There has been minimal research on the pre-school enrollment of immigrant children. Using 1990 U.S. Census data, this paper investigates pre-school enrollment of child immigrants, those who immigrated as children and the U.S.-born children of immigrants. The analysis is conducted using probit...

This study utilizes the heterogeneity of the fee abolition for West German secondary schools to identify its effect on enrollment and to obtain an estimate of the price elasticity of demand for education. The analysis is based on administrative school enrollment statistics as well as on...

Choice and competition in education have found growing support from both policy makers and academics in the recent past. Yet, evidence on the actual benefits of market-oriented reforms is at best mixed. Moreover, while the economic rationale for choice and competition is clear, in existing work...

This paper evaluates school choice at the compulsory-school level by assessing a reform implemented in Sweden in 1992, which opened up for publicly funded but privately operated schools. In many local school markets, this reform led to a significant increase in the quantity of such schools as...

Using American panel data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) this paper investigates the effect of working during grade 12 on attainment. We exploit the longitudinal nature of the NELS by employing, for the first time in the related literature, a semiparametric...

This study develops an analytical framework for evaluating the respective contributions of pupils, peers, and school quality in affecting educational achievement. We implement this framework using rich data from England that matches pupils to their primary schools. The dataset records all...

Using a rich individual-level dataset on secondary public schools in Israel, we find strong evidence for discontinuities in the relationship between enrollment and household characteristics at cutoff points induced by a maximum class size rule. Our findings extend existing work that documents...

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...