This paper reviews the main economic theories and international empirical applications that analyze demand for education. The document begins with a review of the theoretical background since the appearance of human capital theory proposed by Becker (1964), which made way to the emergence of the...

A variety of public campaigns, including the "Just Say No" campaign of the 1980s and 1990s that encouraged teenagers to "Just Say No to Drugs," are based on the premise that teenagers are very susceptible to peer influences. Despite this, very little is known about the effect of school peers on...

There is a strong, positive and well-documented correlation between education and health outcomes. There is much less evidence on the extent to which this correlation reflects the causal effect of education on health - the parameter of interest for policy. In this paper we attempt to overcome...

A variety of public campaigns, including the "Just Say No" campaign of the 1980s and 1990s that encouraged teenagers to "Just Say No to Drugs", are based on the premise that teenagers are very susceptible to peer influences. Despite this, very little is known about the effect of school peers on...

Using micro data on more than 130,000 individuals from 69 countries, we analyze the extent to which joblessness of the individuals and the prevailing unemployment rate in the country impact perceptions of the effectiveness of democracy. We find that personal joblessness experience translates...

I investigate the importance of the match between teachers and schools for student achievement. I show that teacher effectiveness increases after a move to a different school, and I estimate teacher-school match effects using a mixed-effects estimator. Match quality "explains away" a quarter of,...

Most studies of assortative marriage still rely on cross-sectional data and apply log-linear modeling of the contingency table of wives' and husbands' educational levels. However, these macro studies have provided quite ambiguous findings and interpretations. In comparison, the life course...

Critics of international student comparisons argue that results may be influenced by differences in the extent to which countries adequately sample their entire student populations. In this research note, we show that larger exclusion and non-response rates are related to better country average...

An emerging economic literature over the past decade has made use of international tests of educational achievement to analyze the determinants and impacts of cognitive skills. The cross-country comparative approach provides a number of unique advantages over national studies: It can exploit...

We add to the small set of studies that investigate adaptation to low income among the poor and extend the analysis to education and health. In accordance with previous studies, we find that beliefs about the amounts of income necessary to get by and live well increase with both own household...