The efficiency of schools diverges dramatically across countries in the OECD and can also vary markedly within countries. These differences in levels of efficiency can be traced to policy and institutional settings. As such, moving to best practice could boost educational attainment and reduce...

The objective of this paper is an efficiency analysis about Higher Education (HE) systems in European countries. We employ data extracted from the OECD datasets (Education at a Glance, several years), both (1) computing an "overall" Performance Indicator and (2) using a non-parametric technique...

School voucher and education tax credit programs have proliferated in the United States over the past two decades. Advocates have argued that they will enable families to become active consumers in a free and competitive education marketplace, but some fear that these programs may in fact bring...

Improving the educational attainment of disadvantaged students in urban schools is a priority for policy worldwide, but existing research is equivocal about the effectiveness of additional funding for achieving this objective. This study exploits anomalies in the spatial dimension of school...

We examine the mortality effects of a 1947 school reform in Japan, which extended compulsory schooling from primary to secondary school by as much as 3 years. The abolition of secondary school fees also indicates that those affected by the reform likely came from disadvantaged families who could...

We examine the mortality effects of a 1947 school reform in Japan, which extended compulsory schooling from primary to secondary school by as much as 3 years. The abolition of secondary school fees also indicates that those affected by the reform likely came from disadvantaged families who could...

There is considerable disagreement in the academic literature about whether raising school expenditure improves educational outcomes. Yet changing the level of resources is one of the key policy levers open to governments. In the UK, school expenditure has increased by about 40 per cent in real...

This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first-time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. I analysis the impact of the intervention on maternal employment, school attendance, child care use, fertility,...

This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first-time mothers and their families implemented in Germany. 12 months after birth, the intervention increases infants' cognitive development by 0.18 SD. However, the effect fades out after 24...

This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. At the end of the first year of the program, children in home visited families perform significantly better than...