We study whether early tracking of students based on ability increases migrant-native achievement gaps. To eliminate confounding impacts of unobserved country traits, we employ a differences-in-differences strategy that exploits international variation in the age of tracking as well as student...

In Germany and many other countries, students are tracked into various secondary school types. This paper studies whether parents or teachers assess students potential educational performance more adequately. Educational attainment is measured by grade retention rates. We take advantage of a...

This paper presents the result of a field experiment on the effectiveness of non-monetary incentives on pupils' achievement on a mathematical multiple choice test. Our sample consists of 2113 pupils of deprived and high-achieving secondary schools in Germany. Based on a pre-study, we compare the...

While the 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study assesses the average ability of German primary school students as being higher than average, the Programme for International Student Assessment studies (2000, 2003, 2006) ranks German secondary school students at a considerably...

In this study, we examine how economic performance during the child-specific primary school phase, during which teachers make recommendations regarding secondary school level, affects the educational level achieved ultimately by these children. Using data for Germany, we find that an economic...

We study whether early tracking of students based on ability increases migrant-native achievement gaps. To eliminate confounding impacts of unobserved country traits, we employ a differences-in-differences strategy that exploits international variation in the age of tracking as well as student...

This paper examines the impact of urban violence on the standardized test scores of public school students in Medellin. I use the school-level variation in exposure to local homicides for years 2004-2013 in a model that includes school and year fixed effects, allowing me to control for the...