In the context of a voluntary remedial math course for university students, we conduct randomized field experiments to study whether social information can help counteract low participation rates. Incoming students receive postal invitation and reminder letters that inform them about past...

This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. At the end of the first year of the program, children in home visited families perform significantly better than...

This study analyzes the effect of education on the number of children, childlessness, and the timing of the first birth. We use exogenous variation from a mandatory reform to compulsory schooling in West Germany to deal with the endogeneity of schooling. In contrast to studies for other...

This paper studies the role of early center-based child care (age 0-3) for the development of a wide range of skills. The identification strategy uses historical variation in regional child care offer rates in Germany to address selection into center based care. While differences in parenting...

In this paper, we investigate sibling correlations in educational outcomes, which serve as a broad measure of the importance of family and community background. Making use of rich longitudinal survey and register data for Denmark, our main aim is to identify the parental background...

This paper uses child care reforms in Germany to investigate the effects of the legal and economic environment on publicly provided early child care quantity and quality. The analysis is based on administrative data covering all child care centers and family day carers in Germany and school...