This dissertation consists of four distinct empirical essays that address various aspects of the economics of education. Chapters 2 and 3 show that patience and risk-taking as intertemporal preferences are closely related to differences in student achievement across and within countries. Chapter...

We exploit the implementation of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to identify exogenous shifts in mothers' labor force participation and its impact on their children's educational outcomes. Using child level panel data, we find that a mother's participation in the labor force...

This paper investigates how high school gender composition affects students' participation in STEM college studies. Using Danish administrative data, we exploit idiosyncratic within-school variation in gender composition. We find that having a larger proportion of female peers reduces women's...

We estimate the impact of education on productivity, wage costs and productivity-wage gaps (i.e. profits) using Belgian linked panel data. Findings highlight that educational credentials have a stronger impact on productivity than on wage costs. Firms' profitability is found to rise when lower...

This study examines the gendered effects of early and sustained exposure to high-performing peers on female educational trajectories. Exploiting random allocation to classrooms within middle schools, we measure the effect of male and female high performers on girls' high school placement...

Financial literacy is very important for social participation. This paper presents an empirical evaluation of the determinants of financial literacy among students at a German university. An additional goal is the identification of gender differences in respect to financial literacy. The...

For over twenty years, a voucher system has been used in Chile to promote competition in the educational system between public and private schools. Attending a private subsidized school is associated with increased standardized test scores, but the apparent impact is relatively small....

The provision of non-pecuniary incentives in education is a topic that has received much scholarly attention lately. Our paper contributes to this discussion by investigating the effectiveness of grade incentives in increasing student performance. We perform a direct comparison of the two most...

Several recent empirical studies have examined the gender effects of education on economic growth or on steady-state level of output using the much exploited, familiar crosscountry data in order to determine their quantitative importance and the direction of correlation. This paper undertakes a...