Benjamin W. Arold prepared this study while he was working at the Center for Economics of Education at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in March 2022 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the LMU Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical essays that...

The study examined the factors that affect students' academic achievement in Zimbabwe's rural Secondary Schools with Marimasimbe Secondary School (Gokwe South – Midlands Province) taken as a case study. The research adopted a case study methodology and the population sample was drawn from...

This paper studies heterogeneity in schooling decisions by socio-economic status (SES) in response to a repeal of achievement-based admissions requirements (i.e. binding track recommendations) in Germany's between-school tracking system. The main contribution is to show that while previously...

I study how schools impact student performance and educational attainment throughout secondary education, and show that school quality cannot be easily captured by any type of rankings because students with differing characteristics and abilities benefit from different school inputs. To do so, I...

I study how schools impact student performance and educational attainment throughout secondary education, and show that school quality cannot be easily captured by any type of rankings because students with differing characteristics and abilities benefit from different school inputs. To do so, I...

In the us, test score gaps by socioeconomic status and race increase with city size. This paper examines to what extent residential sorting on school quality can explain this fact. We combine 15 years of data on public elementary school students in North Carolina with geocoded school locations...

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...

We conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of a summer learning program for vulnerable students across ten cities in Italy (N=1,038). The program had two components: educational workshops in small groups (88 hours) and personalized tutoring (12 hours). Results indicate...