Using a unique combination of household and violence data sets and a duration analysis methodology, this paper estimates the effect that exposure to armed conflict has on school drop-out decisions of Colombian children between the ages of six and seventeen. After taking into account the possible...

Child labor exists because it is the best response people can find in intolerable circumstances. Poverty and child labor are mutually reinforcing: because their parents are poor, children must work and not attend school, and then grow up poor. Child labor has two important special features....

In this paper, a variety of potentially explanatory indicators for child labor and school attendance in Zambia is scrutinized. By analysing the results from a bivariate probit model, new doubt is raised with regard to the income sensitivity of the child labor choice. Different factors in the...

The authors use panel data for Mexico for 1997 to 1999 to test several assumptions regarding the impact of a conditional cash transfer program on child labor, emphasizing the differential impact on indigenous households. Using data from the conditional cash transfer program in Mexico - PROGRESA...

We analyse the determinants of school attendance and hours worked by children in Pakistan and Nicaragua. On the basis of a theoretical model of children's labour supply, we simultaneously estimate the school attendance decision and the hours worked by Full Model Maximum Likelihood. We analyse...

We study the impact of a student's ordinal rank in a high school cohort on educational attainment several years later. To identify a causal effect, we compare multiple cohorts within the same school, exploiting idiosyncratic variation in cohort composition. We find that a student's ordinal rank...

As Switzerland experiences a severe shortage of nurses, this paper investigates the impact of students' ex ante wage expectations on their choice to pursue a nursing college education. This analysis contributes to a small yet rapidly developing body of literature that uses subjective expectation...

This paper assesses the relationship between courses taken in high school and college major choice. Using High School and Beyond survey data, I study the empirical relationship between college performance and different types of courses taken during high school. I find that students sort into...

Procrastination produces harmful effects for human capital investments and studying activities. Using data from a large sample of Italian undergraduates, we measure procrastination with the actual behaviour of students, considering the delay in finalizing their university enrolment procedure. We...

While uncertainty abounds in almost any decision on investment in schooling, it is mostly ignored in research and virtually absent in labour economics text books. This paper documents the scope for risk, discusses the tough disentanglement of heterogeneity and risk, surveys the analytical...