Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal effect of school absence on long-run socio-economic outcomes. We address this question by combining historical and administrative records for cohorts of Swedish...

Several studies have shown that body height is positively associated with educational attainment. In this paper, we investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship using data on German pre-teen students. We show that (i) taller children are more likely to enroll in 'Gymnasium', the most...

Swedish elementary school children stopped receiving written end of year report cards following a grading reform in 1982. Gradual implementation of the reform creates an opportunity to investigate the effects of being graded on adult educational attainments and earnings for children in the...

Swedish elementary school children stopped receiving written end of year report cards following a grading reform in 1982. Gradual implementation of the reform creates an opportunity to investigate the effects of being graded on adult educational attainments and earnings for children in the...

A dynamic discrete choice model is set up to estimate the effects of grade retention in high school, both in the short-run (end-of-year evaluation) and in the long-run (drop-out and delay). In contrast to other evaluation approaches, this model captures essential treatment heterogeneity and...

We exploit the assignment of exam form in a high-stakes Norwegian high school exam to estimate the impact of exam form on exam results, later school performance, graduation and longer run outcomes. Results indicate that written exams significantly reduce exam grades and reduce the probability of...

Grade retention is a widely used educational policy promoting human capital. However,its benets and costs are still under debate. Retention may aect learning, cognitive and psychologicalcapacities, educational attainment and the lifetime income (through the timingof entry to the labor market)....

Several studies have shown that body height is positively associated with educational attainment. In this paper, we investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship using data on German pre-teen students. We show that (i) taller children are more likely to enroll in 'Gymnasium', the most...

We analyze students' cheating behavior during a national evaluation test. We model the mechanisms that trigger cheating interactions between students and show that, when monitoring is not sufficiently accurate, a social multiplier may magnify the effects on students' achievements. We exploit a...

We analyze how the share of immigrant children in the classroom affects the educational attainment of native Dutch children in terms of their language and math performance at the end of primary school. Our paper studies the spill-over effects at different parts of the test score distribution of...