When grades lose their informative value because the percentage of students receiving the best grade rises without any corresponding increase in ability, this is called grade inflation. Conventional wisdom says that such grade inflation is unavoidable since it is essentially costless to award...

This paper examines field experiment in which we encourage the use of computer-based tests (quizzes) through a set of non-financial incentives and test their effect on effort and performance of students. Our identification strategy exploits cross-cohort experimental variation in assessment rules...

We use the recent introduction of tuition fees at public universities in seven of the sixteen German states to identify the effects of tuition fees on university enrollment of first-year students at German public universities. Our study differs from previous research in two important ways....

We benefit from the Bologna reform to show how course and program policies affect academic achievement. We examine two similar programs at the business school of a major European university, which were both reformed. Time lags in the reforms allow us to estimate the difference in the differences...

Survey data for a large sample of recent graduates from 37 German universities are used to study labor market outcomes of highly skilled young women and immigrants. Our results indicate a systemic wage gap for women, but not for male immigrants. We find no evidence that female immigrants suffer...

This study analyses the effect of an increase in college costs on student achievement, particularly time-to-degree and performance. I exploit a unique policy at a Swiss university to identify and estimate the causal effect of an increase in tuition. Students faced an unexpected raise in tuition....

In this paper we study the situation of scholarly communication in Economics and Business Studies in Germany. We combine findings from an online survey, focus group interviews and a panel discussion. Some of the results of the survey are that economists at German universities and research...

We study the impact of a student's ordinal rank in a high-school cohort on educational attainment several years later. To identify a causal effect, we compare multiple cohorts within the same school, exploiting exogenous variation in cohort composition. We nd that a student's ordinal rank in...