This paper evaluates a randomized controlled trial of a cash transfer program for the girls' education by studying the short-term academic achievement of 3,997 female students (9th–11th grade) across 124 classrooms in 33 public secondary schools in Malawi. Results show that students provided...

Fueled by new evidence, there has been renewed interest about the effects of birth order on human capital accumulation. The underlying causal mechanisms for such effects remain unsettled. We consider a model in which parents impose more stringent disciplinary environments in response to their...

Studies on the role of birth order in educational achievement in developing countries have yielded contradictory findings. This study uses unique and novel data on 4,362 siblings living in alternative care families in 54 countries. Results suggest negative birth order effects among biological...

Fueled by new evidence, there has been renewed interest about the effects of birth order on human capital accumulation. The underlying causal mechanisms for such effects remain unsettled. We consider a model in which parents impose more stringent disciplinary environments in response to their...

Why did substantial parts of Europe abandon the institutionalized churches around 1900? Empirical studies using modern data mostly contradict the traditional view that education was a leading source of the seismic social phenomenon of secularization. We construct a unique panel dataset of...

We analyze the impact of an increase in compulsory schooling policy on the gender gap in intergenerational educational persistence using the Turkish Adult Education Survey (2012). Prior to the reform there is a gender gap in the association of parents' educational attainment with their...

This paper studies the effect of attending a high-quality secondary school on subsequent educational outcomes. The analysis is based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study in which we observe children when they make their secondary school choice (between ages 10-12) and later when...