This paper begins the synthesis of two currently unrelated literatures: the human capital approach to health economics and the economics of cognitive and noncognitive skill formation. A lifecycle investment framework is the foundation for understanding the origins of human inequality and for...

We study the effect of standardized external tests on students’ academic outcomes. We exploit the fact that only one of the 17 Spanish regions started doing and publishing the results of standardized tests in 2005 and apply a difference-in-difference methodology using outcomes of the PISA...

This paper studies a model where student effort and talent interact with parental and teachers' investments, as well as with school system resources. The model is rich, yet sufficiently stylized to provide novel implications. It can show, for example, that an improvement in parental outside...

Discontinuities in markets and technology as well as issues of performance are roiling the field of higher education. Despite the profusion of educational and learning concepts, a comprehensive model for both explaining and testing for educational performance has been hard to come by. The paper...

With the beginning of the new millennium it has become more and more apparent that education and human capital constitute a key element of modern economies. Despite the important role of human capital in modern societies, there are still many unknowns about the process of educational production...

We study self-selection in centralized school choice, a strategy that takes place when students submit preferences before knowing their priorities at schools. A student self-selects if she decides not to apply to some schools despite being desirable. We give a theoretical explanation for this...

Adopting the geometric concepts of a tangent line and a secant ray allows for determining the curvature (convex, concave, or linear) and the behavior of the marginal and average tax rates of an income increasing tax function. Such information helps to determine whether the tax function is...

This paper poses the following question in the context of civil rights in education — is proportionality synonymous with parity? Since 1974 the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has determined that in order for an educational institution to be in compliance with Title IX of the Educational...

Over the past fifty years, elected officials in the name of education reform have promulgated countless policies. Yet the nation continues to face insufficient seats for pre-K kids, and low performance and high dropout rates among older kids. These statistics are harshest for low income and...