Twins-based estimates of the return to schooling feature prominently in the labor economics literature. The validity of such estimates hinges critically on the assumption that within-pair variation in schooling is explained by factors which are unrelated to wage earning ability. This paper...

Twins-based estimates of the return to schooling feature prominently in the labor economics literature. The validity of such estimates hinges critically on the assumption that within-pair variation in schooling is explained by factors which are unrelated to wage earning ability. This paper...

What is it about schooling that the labor market rewards? The long time answer has essentially been noncognitive skills (i.e., behavioral and personality traits). Allowing cognitive skills (i.e., the capacity to process information and apply knowledge to working tasks) to be acquired both inside...

We experimentally test how psychological motivations can impact the processing of purely objective information. We first document that, when the high-stakes College Entrance Exam is held in the month of Ramadan, Chinese Muslim students perform significantly worse. When asked about the impact of...

In this paper, I offer a theoretical explanation of the robust gender differences in educational achievement distributions of school children. I consider a shot cheap talk game with two different types of senders (biased teachers and fair teachers), two types of receivers ("normal" and "special"...

This paper provides a political-economic model to study the impact of low-skilled immigration on the host country's education system, which is characterized by sources of school funding, the average expenditure per pupil, and the type of parents who are more likely to send their children to...

We construct a simple model of compulsory schooling in which legislation and compliance are endogenously determined by individuals disciplined by social norms, optimizing their voting decisions and the school attendance of their children. The model provides a formal framework for interpreting...