Using individual income data from university archives, we look at the development of professorial salaries over a time-span covering the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich as well as the Federal Republic of Germany. We find that relative salaries have fallen dramatically, both...

With girls having overtaken boys in many education indicators, the feminization of elementary school teaching is causing debates across the globe about disadvantages for male students. Using administrative panel data on the universe of students, teachers and schools for a German state, I exploit...

This paper examines the role of genetic factors and shared environment in explaining the choice of working in the public sector and public-private sector pay gaps. The analyses are done using data for Finnish twins that span the period from 1990 to 2004. The data are based on two sources. The...

How does competition affect the entry and selection of politicians? I use data on U.S. Congressional primary and general elections for the years 1998-2014 to study this question. I measure quality using previous legislative experience and the novel "identity match" quantifying how well...

Since 2007, the Ecuadorian government has required teacher candidates to pass national skill and content knowledge tests before they are allowed to participate in merit-based selection competitions for tenured positions at public schools in an attempt to raise teacher quality. We evaluate the...

The value-added to student achievement model has become a key tool for estimating the effects of individual teachers and their classrooms on students' short-term academic success, and more importantly, on later-life outcomes. We use primary school data from the German National Educational Panel...

We analyze different committee designs in a model with the endogenous participation of experts who have private information about their own abilities. Each committee design involves a test of abilities whose accuracy influences experts’ decisions to participate. We derive the following...

Evidence is presented that the number of traffic deaths and traffic injuries increased significantly due to a railway strike in Germany. While the number of slightly and seriously injured people increased on all road types, the number of fatally injured people increased only on roads out of...