Students face four decision margins: (a) How many years to spend in school, (b) What to study, (c) How much effort to devote to learning per year and (d) Whether to disrupt or assist the learning of classmates. The thousands of studies that have applied human capital theory to the first two...

We examine whether parental and school investments reinforce or compensate for student performance. Our analysis exploits school-starting-age rules in 34 countries, capturing achievement variation that arises because younger children typically underperform their older peers. Parents respond to...

We examine whether and how teachers' major fields of study affect students' achievement, exploiting within-student variation across subfields in natural science (i.e., physics, chemistry, biology, and Earth science). Using middle-school students' data from the Trends in International Mathematics...

In Finland, children start school during the calendar year they turn seven years old. This creates a discontinuous jump in school starting age. I utilize a regression discontinuity design and rich register data to study whether this discontinuous jump in the school starting age affects...

The previous literature has shown that children who enter school at a more advanced age outperform their younger classmates on competency tests taken between kindergarten and Grade 10. This study analyzes whether these effects of school starting age continue into adulthood. Based on data on math...

The previous literature has shown that children who enter school at a more advanced age outperform their younger classmates on competency tests taken between kindergarten and Grade 10. This study analyzes whether these effects of school starting age continue into adulthood. Based on data on math...

The previous literature has shown that children who enter school at a more advanced age outperform their younger classmates on competency tests taken between kindergarten and Grade 10. This study analyzes whether these effects of school starting age continue into adulthood. Based on data on math...

The previous literature has shown that children who enter school at a more advanced age outperform their younger classmates on competency tests taken between kindergarten and Grade 10. This study analyzes whether these effects of school starting age continue into adulthood. Based on data on math...

This paper provides evidence of the effect of age at school entry on college admission and earnings. It does so by exploiting a number of features in the application process to one of the major flagship universities in Brazil. By comparing applicants with different ages at school entry depending...