We study the origins of what has become one of the most radical and encompassing programmes of school reform seen in the recent past amongst advanced countries – the introduction of academy schools to English secondary education. Academies are state schools that are allowed to run in an...

It is still taken for granted that (early) ability tracking increases the impact of social origin on achievement in (lower) secondary education, but without gains in the overall level. This contribution addresses the question of whether this common conviction is really correct. The various...

This paper investigates the rates of return and the risks of different types of educational paths after compulsory education. We distinguish a purely academic educational path from a purely vocational path and a mixed path with loops through both systems. To study the labor market outcome we...

The growth of potential GDP in Mexico is not fast enough to narrow the income gap with other OECD countries at a sufficient pace. The persistent weakness in human capital development contributes to this situation. In particular, Mexicans spend comparatively few years in formal education, and the...

This volume was prepared by Susanne Link during her stay at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and the Department of Human Capital and Innovation of the Ifo Institute of Economic Research. It was accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Economics Departure of the University of Munich in...

This paper provides an overview of the achievements and challenges of Ecuador's education sector since year 2000. Ecuador has introduced significant reforms and has made important investments in the education sector, which have gone hand in hand with improvements in education access and quality....

What do applicants care about when choosing a school in Turkey? Are their preferences vertical or horizontal? Which school attributes seem to matter? Do selective schools con-tribute to their students' ; success, or is their performance attributable to the higher ability of the students they...

In recent years, many states, including California, Texas, and Oregon, have changed admissions policies to increase access to public universities for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. A key concern, however, is how these students will perform. This paper examines the relationship...

The reversing achievement gap across genders observed in many countries has led to a heated debate on the persistent gap in academia and other top fields. Using Turkish administrative data and the particular institutional characteristics, this pa- per aims to analyze the gender gap in...

This study uses a rich longitudinal data-set of 13,202 full-time students belonging to 11 cohorts over 22 consecutive semesters (Fall 1995 to Spring 2006) to model the determinants of the grade inflation rates prevailing at the University of Puerto Rico at Bayamón. The following new interesting...