The huge difference in the level and variance of student performance in the 2000 PISA study between Finland and Germany motivates this paper. It analyses why Finnish students performed so much better by estimating educational production functions for both countries. The difference in the reading...

When the Soviet Union collapsed a transition process started in Eastern Europe. This included a number of reforms to adapt the educational system to the new requirements of the job market. To assess the educational systems in Eastern Europe, this paper takes a look at the gap in PISA test scores...

We analyze the effects of instruction time and class size on student achievement in Germany. Using econometric evaluation techniques we are able to deal with unobserved heterogeneity in the student body. Specifically we apply first-difference methods and matching across subjects to control for...