A priori, one would expect that well educated women would choose to work fulltime to collect the returns to their investment in education. However, that is not the case. We analyze this phenomenon in a discrete choice dynamic programming framework, taking the potentially endogenous effect of...

We investigate the effect of immigrants' marriage behavior on dropout from education. To identify the causal effect, we exploit a recent Danish policy reform which generated exogenous variation in marriage behavior by a complete abolishment of spouse import for immigrants below 24 years of age....

Outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries has increased the focus on the accumulation of skills - such as Math skills - in high-wage countries. In this paper, we exploit a high school pilot scheme to identify the causal effect of advanced high school Math on labor market outcomes. The pilot...

It is notoriously difficult to identify peer effects within the family, because of the common shocks and reflection problems. We make use of a novel identification strategy and unique data in order to gain some purchase on this problem. We employ data from the universe of children born in...

During the recession in the 1970s and 1980s in less-developed countries in general and in Zambia in specific, private costs of schooling increased and school quality deteriorated. Combined with poverty, these changes may have damaged the demand for primary education. This observation motivated a...

This paper examines how skills are shaped by social interactions in families. We show that older siblings causally affect younger sibling's education choices and early career earnings. We focus on critical course choices in high school and overcome the identification challenges of estimating...

We exploit variation stemming from school consolidations in Denmark from 2010-2011 to analyze the impact on student achievement as measured by test scores. For each student we observe enrollment and test scores one year prior to school consolidation and up to four years after. We find that...

This article examines the implementation of a set of compulsory IT-based, self-scored, and adaptive nationwide tests in a low-stakes accountability system. We exploit exogenous variation resulting from students voluntarily retaking the nationwide test after the IT system was down for ten days....

How do institutions and peer groups shape skills? We exploit a universal free-choice reform signaling less importance of advanced math-science in high school. We show how it amplified the fall in math-science skills and triggered gender convergence as boys crowded-in the free-choice reform. We...

This paper estimates effects of early ADHD medication use on key human capital outcomes for children diagnosed with ADHD while using rarely available register based data on diagnoses and prescription drug purchases. Our main identification strategy exploits plausible exogenous assignment of...