Pietro Sancassani prepared this study while he was working at the Center for Economics of Education at the ifo Institut. The study was completed in March 2023 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the LMU Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical essays and...

The great majority of studies on the effect of school quality on academic outcomes do not take account of changes in student choices concerning effort if school quality, e.g. class size, changes. We show that empirical estimates of the "total" effect of changes in school quality could be quite...

This paper proposes an approach to identifying the education production function with endogenous inputs, and applies it in the context of part-time employment decisions by UK teenagers in compulsory education. We identify simultaneously the effect of part-time employment and latent endogenous...

We identify the effects of part-time employment, study time at home, and attitudes in school, in the production function for educational performance among UK teenagers in compulsory education. Our approach identifies the factors driving differences between the reduced form 'policy effect' of...

Peer effects in education production functions are predominantly employed as the mean classroom performance. Based on sociological theory and using spatial regression techniques, I introduce social network matrices that correspond to a weighting scheme for peers within the class. In a spatial...

In the research on peer effects, unweighted mean classroom performance is the predominant measure used in the estimation of education production functions. In this paper, based on the sociological concept of homophily, I introduce social network matrices that correspond to a weighting scheme for...

Does relaxing strict school discipline improve student achievement, or lead to classroom disorder? We study a 2012 reform in New York City public middle schools that eliminated suspensions for non-violent, disorderly behavior. Math scores of students in more-affected schools rose by 0.05...

The quality of labor-market entry achieved by newly qualified apprentices in West Germany is analyzed from 1948 to 1992. A bivariate probit model, using data from the BIBB/IAB employment survey, is applied to estimate simultaneously the quality of the school-to-apprenticeship transition and that...

The quality of labor-market entry achieved by newly qualified apprentices in West Germany is analyzed from 1948 to 1992. A bivariate probit model, using data from the BIBB/IAB employment survey, is applied to estimate simultaneously the quality of the school-to-apprenticeship transition and that...

In this paper, I evaluate potential side effects of the educational expansion in Germany on the learning outcomes of today's students. The educational expansion was a demand shock in the labor market of teachers, which could have thus encouraged individuals with different teaching abilities to...