The American "high school movement" of the early 20th century resulted in a dramatic rise in high school graduation rates, a trend that continued into the middle of the century interrupted only by World War II. Previous work has characterized the pre-World War II transformation of secondary...

Given that a growing number of countries have abolished or are considering the abolition of military conscription, understanding the consequences of this measure is of increased importance. In this paper we study the effect of the suppression of compulsory military service on university...

In 1997, the French government put into effect a law that permanently exempted young French male citizens born after Jan 1, 1979 from mandatory military service while still requiring those born before that cutoff date to serve. This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to identify the...

Given that a growing number of countries have abolished or are considering the abolition of military conscription, understanding the consequences of this measure is of increased importance. In this paper we study the effect of the suppression of compulsory military service on university...

Having a military that is representative of the population is a stated social goal by policy makers. Since the armed forces do not gather data on the family income of recruits, studies on the socioeconomic background have relied on potentially biased geographic data, reaching conflicting...

Compulsory military service typically drafts young men when they are at the height of their learning ability. Thus, it can be expected to depress the demand for higher education since skill atrophy and the delayed entry into the civilian labor market reduce the returns to human-capital...

Compulsory military service typically drafts young men when they are at the height of their learning ability. Thus, it can be expected to depress the demand for higher education since skill atrophy and the delayed entry into the civilian labor market reduce the returns to human-capital...

Peacetime military service has both positive and negative effects on human capital. While it depreciates academic abilities it also enhances non-cognitive skills. The net effect of conscription is hard to identify due to issues of self-selection, endogenous timing and omitted variables bias. We...