This paper re-examines the instrumental variable (IV) approach to estimating returns to education by use of compulsory school law (CSL) in the US. We show that the IV-approach amounts to a change in model specification by changing the causal status of the variable of interest. From this...

Human capital investments at an early age appear crucial for individual outcomes. Family size might affect these investments influencing parental time and economic resources invested in children's education. This aspect is related to the children quantity-quality trade-off proposed by Becker...

The Bologna Process aimed at harmonizing European higher education systems and at increasing their efficiency. This paper analyzes impacts of the Bologna Reform for Germany by using unique micro data from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU). We estimate treatment effects on the probability to...

The Bologna Process aimed at harmonizing European higher education systems and at increasing their efficiency. This paper analyzes impacts of the Bologna Reform for Germany by using unique micro data from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU). We estimate treatment effects on the probability to...

Given a severe nurse shortage in Switzerland, this paper investigates Swiss students choice for nursing college education and the impact of their ex ante wage expectations on college enrolment. The analysis contributes to a small developing literature that uses subjective wage expectation data...

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...

In this paper we analyze investments in human capital assets in a way which is standard for financial assets, but not (yet) for human capital assets. We study mean-variance plots of human capital assets. We compare the properties of human capital returns using a performance measure and by using...

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...