Student performance differs greatly across countries, but little is known about the role of teacher quality in explaining these differences. New international data from the PIAAC survey of adult skills allow for the first time to quantify teacher skills in numeracy and literacy, providing...

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...

The direct democratic choice of an examination standard, i.e., a performance level required to graduate, is evaluated against a utilitarian welfare function. It is shown that the median preferred standard is inefficiently low if the marginal cost of reaching a higher performance reacts more...