The literature suggests that competition among schools might increase quality. However, not much empirical evidence is present as only a few countries allow competition at a large scale. One exception is the Netherlands. Free parental choice is the leading principle of the Dutch education system...

Ample evidence is available for the effect of competition on educational quality as only a few countries allow large scale competition. In the Netherlands free parental choice is present since the beginning of the 20th century, which can be characterized as a full voucher program with 100%...

East Asian students regularly take top positions in international league tables of educational performance. Using internationally comparable student-level data, I estimate how family background and schooling policies affect student performance in five high-performing East Asian economies. Family...

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...

This paper examines the effects of class size on the decision to stay on in full time schooling at the age of 16 and on wages at later stages in life. Little research exists on the effect of school quality on career decisions, although it has potentially important long term implications. We use...

Nineteenth-Century Catholic doctrine strongly opposed state schooling. We show that countries with larger shares of Catholics in 1900 (but without a Catholic state religion) tend to have larger shares of privately operated schools even today. We use this historical pattern as a natural...

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...

Despite its high relevance to current policy debates, estimating the causal effect of Information Communication Technology (ICT) investment on educational standards remains fraught with difficulties. In this paper, we exploit a change in the rules governing ICT funding across different school...

Nineteenth-Century Catholic doctrine strongly opposed state schooling. We show that countries with larger shares of Catholics in 1900 (but without a Catholic state religion) tend to have larger shares of privately operated schools even today. We use this historical pattern as a natural...

We provide estimates for the effect of attending a Faith school on educational achievement using a census of primary school pupils in England. We argue that there are no credible instruments for Faith school attendance in this context. Instead, we partially control for selection into religious...