In the case of France, we analyse the changes in the wage value of each education level and the impact of parents’ education and income upon the education attainment of children, sons and daughters. We find a critical decline in the skill premium of the Baccalauréat (‘bac’) in relation to...

Over the 2000s, many federal states in Germany shortened the duration of secondary school by one year while keeping the curriculum unchanged. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation due to the staggered introduction of this reform allows me to identify the causal effect of increased learning...

This paper investigates the long-run consequences of a later school entry for personality traits. For identification, we exploit the statutory cutoff rules for school enrollment in Germany within a regression discontinuity design. We find that relatively older school starters have persistently...

In the case of France, we analyse the changes (i) in the skill premium linked to each level of education and (ii) in the impact of parents’ skill and income upon the educational attainment of their children. To this end, we build a theoretical model which is subsequently estimated. Our...

We use information on second-generation migrants to study the existence of a cultural component on the formation process of noncognitive skills and its effect on education and employment outcomes. Our measures of noncognitive skills include: personality traits that children are encouraged to...

We use information on second-generation migrants to study the existence of a cultural component on the formation process of noncognitive skills and its effect on education and employment outcomes. Our measures of noncognitive skills include: personality traits that children are encouraged to...

This paper studies the extent to which young children develop their cognitive ability in high and low quality schools. We use a representative panel data set containing cognitive test scores of 4-6 year olds in Dutch schools. School quality is measured by the school's average achievement test...

Mentoring has become an extremely popular policy for improving the retention and performance of new teachers, but we know little about its effects on teacher and student outcomes. I study the impact of mentoring in New York City, which adopted a nationally recognized mentoring program in 2004. I...

A highly skilled workforce is crucial to sustain competitiveness and contain the rise in income inequality. Recent surveys of adult skills and educational performance suggest that younger cohorts are doing less well than their predecessors. Many immigrants struggle both in school and in the...