This volume was prepared by Susanne Link during her stay at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and the Department of Human Capital and Innovation of the Ifo Institute of Economic Research. It was accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Economics Departure of the University of Munich in...

This volume was prepared by Susanne Link during her stay at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and the Department of Human Capital and Innovation of the Ifo Institute of Economic Research. It was accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Economics Departure of the University of Munich in...

In this paper I survey the recent economics of education literature in order to identify which education policies can effectively improve the quality of primary schooling, as measured by pupil test-based achievements. Particular attention is devoted to the experience of England, a country which...

What are the long-term effects of universal preschool programs on child outcomes? We review 26 studies using natural experiments to estimate the effects of universal preschool programs for children aged 0-6 years on child outcomes measured from third grade to adulthood. Studies comparing...

We study the effects of grade retention on secondary school performance by considering a change in Colombia's educative legislation. In 2010, the rule that forced schools to retain up to a 5% of students was abolished. Exploiting variation in schools' retention rates in a...

We use a new empirical strategy to test various measures of school effectiveness in England. Our approach exploits discontinuities in attendance probabilities that occur at unpredictable distance cutoffs used as tiebreakers in admissions processes for oversubscribed schools. We show that raw,...

In this paper we estimate by matching techniques the effects of a French retraining program on the reemployment rate of displaced workers. This program, called "Conventions de conversion", was intended to improve reemployment prospects of displaced workers by proposing them retraining and job...