Less than a decade ago, several German states introduced tuition fees for university education. Despite their comparatively low level of about €500 per semester, fees were perceived by the public to increase social injustice and have been abolished recently. Whereas other studies have shown no...

Over the 2000s, many federal states in Germany shortened the duration of secondary school by one year while keeping the curriculum unchanged. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation due to the staggered introduction of this reform allows me to identify the causal effect of increased learning...

Research on educational disadvantages of second-generation immigrants largely focuses on differences in student achievement tests. Exploiting data from the German PIRLS Extension, we provide evidence that second-generation immigrants face an additional disadvantage when tracked into different...

Research on immigrants' educational disadvantages largely focuses on differences in student achievement tests. Exploiting data from the German PIRLS extension, we find that second-generation immigrants face additional disadvantages with respect to grades and teacher recommendations for secondary...

This paper studies the effect of the end of school summer breaks on SARS-CoV-2 cases in Germany. We exploit variation in the staggered timing of summer breaks across federal states which allows us to implement an event study design. We base our analysis on official daily counts of confirmed...

We use event-study models based on staggered summer vacations in Germany to estimate the effect of school re-openings after the summer of 2021 on the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Estimations are based on daily counts of confirmed coronavirus infections across all 401 German counties. Our results are...

The ifo Education Survey is a representative opinion survey of the German voting-age population on education topics that has been conducted annually since 2014. It covers public preferences on a wide range of education policy issues ranging from early childhood education, schools, and...

The ifo Education Survey is a representative opinion survey of the German voting-age population on education topics that has been conducted annually since 2014. It covers public preferences on a wide range of education policy issues ranging from early childhood education, schools, and...

This article reviews empirical evidence on the early tracking system in Germany and the educational inequalities associated with it. Overall, the literature confirms the existence of considerable social, ethnic, gender- and age-related inequalities in secondary school track placement. Studies on...

Less than a decade ago, several German states introduced tuition fees for university education. Despite their comparatively low level, fees were perceived by the public to increase social injustice, and have been abolished. Whereas other studies have shown no effect on enrollment, we analyze the...