Most studies find little to no effect of classroom computers on student achievement. We suggest that this null effect may combine positive effects of computer uses without equivalently effective alternative traditional teaching practices and negative effects of uses that substitute more...

This paper studies the effect of attending a high-quality secondary school on subsequent educational outcomes. The analysis is based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study in which we observe children when they make their secondary school choice (between ages 10-12) and later when...

I propose a novel way of identifying peer group effects by employing a regressiondiscontinuity design that makes use of the assignment mechanism of students into classes in Brazilian primary schools. I estimate a significant negative effect for students close to the cut-off point from being in...

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...

In Germany and many other countries, students are tracked into various secondary school types. This paper studies whether parents or teachers assess students potential educational performance more adequately. Educational attainment is measured by grade retention rates. We take advantage of a...

The paper adds to the literature on extracurricular early childhood education and child development by exploiting unique data on an educational project in Germany, the Junior University (JU). By utilizing a quasi-experimental study design we estimate the causal short-term effect of JU enrollment...

Existing estimates of the labor-market returns to human capital give a distorted picture of the role of skills across different economies. International comparisons of earnings analyses rely almost exclusively on school attainment measures of human capital, and evidence incorporating direct...

Can policymakers hire more effective teachers by increasing the relative economic benefits of teaching? We investigate this question by exploiting business cycle conditions at career start as a source of exogenous variation in the outside labor market opportunities of potential teachers. Using...

Using individual-level panel data from European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (2007-2010) we explore to what extend wage differentials across European countries are explained by differences in education, actual experience and health. The human capital literature suggests an...