A large literature aims to establish a causal link between education and health using changes in compulsory schooling laws. It is however unclear how well more education is operationalized by marginal increases in school years. We shed a new light on this discussion by analyzing the health...

A large literature aims to establish a causal link between education and health using changes in compulsory schooling laws. It is however unclear how well more education is operationalized by marginal increases in school years. We shed a new light on this discussion by analyzing the health...

A large literature aims to establish a causal link between education and health using changes in compulsory schooling laws. It is however unclear how well more education is operationalized by marginal increases in school years. We shed a new light on this discussion by analyzing the health...

This paper estimates the impact of peer achievement and variance on math achievement growth. It exploits exogenous variation in peer characteristics generated at the transition to upper-secondary school in a sample of Berlin fifth graders. Parents and schools are barely able to condition their...

Incentives are widely used to increase people's effort and thus performance. Whileacademic achievement depends heavily on effort, there is little empirical evidence onhow students respond to incentives other than grades and monetary rewards. We drawon two natural experiments that occurred at a...

This paper estimates ability peer effects on achievement growth in reading and math. It exploits variation in peer characteristics generated at the transition from primary to secondary school in a sample of Berlin fifth-graders. As will be discussed in detail, this variation is exogenous in...

This paper uses a new measure of human capital, which distinguishes both quality and quantity components, to estimate the long-term effect of the Covid-19-related school closures on aggregate productivity through the human capital channel. Productivity losses build up over time and are estimated...

In addition to the humanitarian suffering and huge immediate economic costs, the war in Ukraine will have long-term consequences, among which are losses in human capital that will impact aggregate productivity for many years. Exploiting a new stock measure of human capital combining the quality...

Adolescent mental health is key for later well-being. Yet, causal evidence on environmental drivers of adolescent mental health is scant. We study how an important classroom feature - the gender composition in compulsory-school - affects mental health. We use Swedish administrative data...

This paper analyzes the impact of shortening the duration of secondary schooling on the accumulation of human capital. In 2003, an educational policy reform was enacted in Saxony-Anhalt, a German state, providing a natural experimental setting. The thirteenth year of schooling was eliminated for...