Using country panel data of student achievement from PISA, 2003-2012 combined with national-level teacher salary data from the OECD; this study investigates if relatively short term -5-years - changes in the level and structure of statutory teacher salaries affect student performance in the...

While most empirical studies document that cognitive and social skills are strong predictors of individual earnings, their impact is not homogenous in space. We argue that dense urban settings utilize cognitive and social skills more intensively than rural areas, therefore the labour market...

This paper examines the effect of teacher gender on student achievement in 20 European countries. We employ a student fixed effect approach to account for unobservable subject-invariant student ability and non-random student-teacher sorting. Our results show that female teachers tend to increase...

We estimate preferences for school tracks in upper secondary education in Hungary. We consider travel time, school SES composition, school level (in terms of peer quality) and school quality (in terms of added value). We find that students have stronger preferences for school SES composition and...

Girls tend to outperform boys in reading tests, while they usually lag behind boys in math. However, the size of the gender gap varies to a great extent between countries. While the existing literature explains these differences as being mainly due to cultural factors, this paper explores...