Between 1960 and 1979, 93 new universities opened in Germany. Using this large tertiary education expansion, I estimate the effect of a university opening on the probability of obtaining a university degree in the local population. I exploit the geographical variation in local university access...

To investigate the effects of reducing the intensity of tracking, this study exploits reforms across German states which combined the two lower secondary school tracks, sometimes additionally offering the possibility to acquire a university entrance qualification. Using a...

The German schooling system selects children into different secondary school tracks already at a very early stage in life. School track choice heavily influences choices and opportunities later in life. It has often been observed that secondary schooling achievements display a strong correlation...

Without a school degree, students can have difficulty in the labor market. To improve the lives of upper-secondary school dropouts, German states instituted a school reform that awarded an interim degree to high-track students upon completion of Grade 9. Using retrospective spell data on school...

Several studies have shown that body height is positively associated with educational attainment. In this paper, we investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship using data on German pre-teen students. We show that (i) taller children are more likely to enroll in 'Gymnasium', the most...

Several studies have shown that body height is positively associated with educational attainment. In this paper, we investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship using data on German pre-teen students. We show that (i) taller children are more likely to enroll in ‘Gymnasium’, the most...

This paper studies the effect of longer school days - induced by voluntary all-day programs in German primary schools - on school performance. We combine data from the National Educational Panel Study covering 5348 primary school students with municipality-level information on all-day school...

This paper studies the effect of longer school days - induced by voluntary all-day programs in German primary schools - on school performance. We combine data from the National Educational Panel Study covering 5771 primary school students with municipality-level information on all-day school...

This paper estimates the short-term effects of the introduction of the Bachelor degree in the framework of the Bologna Process on college enrollment and drop-out rates. We use variation in the timing of the Bachelor implementation at the department level to identify the effect of the reform...

We use administrative panel data on about a quarter of a million students in the German state of Hesse to estimate the causal effect of class size on school tracking outcomes after elementary school. Our identification strategy relies on the quasi-random assignment of students to different class...