A commonly held perception is that an elite graduate degree can "scrub" a less prestigious but less costly undergraduate degree. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates from 2003 through 2017, this paper examines the relationship between the status of undergraduate degrees and...

A commonly held perception is that an elite graduate degree can "scrub" a less prestigious but less costly undergraduate degree. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates from 2003 through 2017, this paper examines the relationship between the status of undergraduate degrees and...

A commonly held perception is that an elite graduate degree can “scrub” a less prestigious but less costly undergraduate degree. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates from 2003 through 2017, this paper examines the relationship between the status of undergraduate degrees...

We study how a large household windfall affects sorting of relatively disadvantaged youth over high school tracks by exploiting the discontinuity in the assignment of a welfare program in Mexico. The in-cash transfer is found to significantly increase the probability of selecting vocational...

This paper studies heterogeneity in schooling decisions by socio-economic status (SES) in response to a repeal of achievement-based admissions requirements (i.e. binding track recommendations) in Germany's between-school tracking system. The main contribution is to show that while previously...

We examine the effect of attending academically selective high schools on test scores, by leveraging administrative data that matches high school preferences of the population of urban middle school graduates in one Chinese prefecture in 2010 with high school student records. The standard...

Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. Using the largest available sample of lotteried applicants to charter schools, we explore student-level and school-level explanations for this...

This article reviews empirical evidence on the early tracking system in Germany and the educational inequalities associated with it. Overall, the literature confirms the existence of considerable social, ethnic, gender- and age-related inequalities in secondary school track placement. Studies on...

Does a school district that expands school choice provide better outcomes for students than a neighborhood-based assignment system? This paper studies the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program, a school choice initiative of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that created small high school...

Expanding parental choice in education may increase system-wide productivity if parents select schools that form a specifically good match with their children. I investigate the effect of attending a preferred school on student achievement in London primary schools. I exploit as good as random...