The determinants which are decisive for a successful accumulation of human capital and the transfer of these skills into the labor market are a contentious issue in the literature on the economics of education. Different studies on, for instance, the impact of school resources typically reach...

The German practice of compelling weak students to repeat a class has come under heavy criticism recently. Many observers fear that this practice is, at best, useless or even counterproductive. However, little is known so far on the consequences of having to repeat a class, as compared to be...

The majority of empirical papers in the literature on school quality finds no or only small effects of class size and other school quality measures on students' outcomes. This paper analyses the effect of achievement heterogeneity and therefore the effect of the composition rather than the pure...

The publication of the OECD report on the PISA 2000 study induced a public outcry in Germany.On average,German students participating in this standardized test performed considerably below the OECD average and substantially worse than those of other European countries,like Finland or...

Data from 31 countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is used to estimate education production functions for reading literacy.The analysis suggests that the probability of finding tatistically significant and correctly signed class size effects...