This volume was prepared by Benedikt Siegler while working at the Center for the Economics of Education of the Ifo Institute. It was completed in June 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich (LMU) in November 2014. The thesis includes...

Using data from the 2012 Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) for Italy, this paper investigates whether financial literacy skills play a role in shaping the value that high school students place on schooling. We hypothesize that higher financial literacy may foster students'...

The surveys conducted by the RANEPA’s Center for Lifelong Learning Economics have shown that parents and secondary school teachers alike believe that the pandemic has not significantly affected the school system’s performance in preparing students for their final exams. Nevertheless,...

This paper examines patterns of school choice in Egypt from primary through higher education. We use a mixed-methods approach that combines survey data with qualitative in-depth interviews to explore schooling decisions. Some private and religious schools exist, but we find that in most...

For over twenty years, a voucher system has been used in Chile to promote competition in the educational system between public and private schools. Attending a private subsidized school is associated with increased standardized test scores, but the apparent impact is relatively small....

This paper examines the effects of two different education financing systems: a foundation system and a state system on the level and distribution of resources devoted to education in the presence of private schools. We use political economy approach where households differ in their level of...

We examine the effect of a gifted and talented program in academic secondary education. Students are assigned based on a cutoff score in a cognitive aptitude test, which we exploit in a fuzzy regression discontinuity framework to identify program effects. We find that assigned students obtain...

School voucher and education tax credit programs have proliferated in the United States over the past two decades. Advocates have argued that they will enable families to become active consumers in a free and competitive education marketplace, but some fear that these programs may in fact bring...

In 1995, the Michigan state government centralized a school finance system by removing local discretion on school revenue. The theoretical framework says that centralization has the price and income effects on the pivotal voter's demand for school spending, probably reducing overall spending...