This paper first describes the educational system in Turkey and the two national examinations for advancing upper levels of schooling which give raise to the demand for private tutoring called "dersane" in Turkish. Second, the evolution of the Private tutoring Centers (PTC) are described and...

Choice and competition in education have found growing support from both policy makers and academics in the recent past. Yet, evidence on the actual benefits of market-oriented reforms is at best mixed. Moreover, while the economic rationale for choice and competition is clear, in existing work...

Given that a growing number of countries have abolished or are considering the abolition of military conscription, understanding the consequences of this measure is of increased importance. In this paper we study the effect of the suppression of compulsory military service on university...

During the postwar period German states pursued policies to increase the share of young Germans obtaining a university entrance diploma (Abitur) by building more academic track schools, but the timing of educational expansion differed between states. This creates exogenous variation in the...

Immigrants typically perform worse than other students in the OECD countries. We examine to what extent this is due to the population characteristics of the neighborhoods that immigrants grow up in. We address this issue using a governmental refugee placement policy which provides exogenous...

The trade-off between child quantity and education is a crucial ingredient of unified growth models that explain the transition from Malthusian stagnation to modern growth. We present first evidence that such a trade-off indeed existed before the demographic transition, exploiting a unique...

Taxation changes the expectations of prospective university students about their future level and uncertainty of after-tax income. To estimate the impact of taxes on university enrollment, we develop and estimate a structural microeconometric model, in which a high-school graduate decides to...

As the time of leaving school determines the level of academic achievement this timing decision is central for the human capital investment decision. Real option theory offers a new perspective of the human capital investment decision under uncertainty and irreversibility. Unlike other...

The paper develops a model of educational choices with uncertainty to account for the high drop out rate in countries with open admission policies at university entry. As long as university entry reveals useful information, students have incentives to enroll, update their beliefs and choose...

The trade-off between child quantity and education is a crucial ingredient of unified growth models that explain the transition from Malthusian stagnation to modern growth. We present first evidence that such a trade-off indeed existed before the demographic transition, exploiting a unique...