Ample empirical evidence links adverse conditions during early childhood (the period from conception to age five) to worse health outcomes and lower academic achievement in adulthood. Can early-life medical care and public health interventions ameliorate these effects? Recent research suggests...

Many countries are experiencing increasing inflows of immigrant students. This raises concerns that having a large share of students for whom the host country language is not their first language may have detrimental effects on the educational outcomes of native children. However, the evidence...

Concerns about poor student performance have led schools to diverge from traditional teacher compensation and base a portion of pay on student outcomes. In the US, the number of school districts adopting such performancebased financial incentives has increased by more than 40% since 2004....

This paper provides the first analysis of the relationship between the language mix of Limited English Proficient (LEP) peers and student achievement, using detailed panel data from 2006 to 2012. Percent LEP has a negative association with mathematics and reading test scores, more so for non-LEP...

Zur gezielten Förderung von Wissenschaft und Forschung an den Universitäten hat die Politik 2005 die Exzellenzinitiative ins Leben gerufen. Die Gewinner des Wettbewerbs um Fördergelder wurden fortan als „Eliteuniversitäten“ bezeichnet. Der folgende Beitrag untersucht, ob die Zahl der...

The great majority of studies on the effect of school quality on academic outcomes do not take account of changes in student choices concerning effort if school quality, e.g. class size, changes. We show that empirical estimates of the "total" effect of changes in school quality could be quite...

Mit der Umsetzung der vor 15 Jahren beschlossenen Bologna-Reformen verschoben sich sowohl die Zielkoordinaten als auch die Mittel der Hochschulpolitik. Die berufliche Qualifikation Studierender rückte stärker in den Vordergrund, und es wurden neue Governance-Strukturen in Anlehnung an das neue...

This paper evaluates the impact of an intervention targeted at marginalized low-performance students in public secondary schools in Mexico City. The program consisted in offering free additional math courses, taught by undergraduate students from some of the most prestigious Mexican...

The existence of a rigid cutoff date which determines when children start primary school creates a large heterogeneity in students' level of maturity within the classroom. We use rich administrative data of the universe of public schools in Catalonia to show that: (1) relatively younger children...

The living situation of the elderly population in Europe is gaining importance due to demographic change. In many European countries, women receive substantially lower pensions than men; gender pension gaps among pensioners can be up to 69 percent. When taking elderly people without a pension...