The purpose of the paper is to explain why and how American universities have taken the lead in continuing education compared to their European counterparts. In a first step we will discuss different notions of continuing education and develop an analytical framework to handle its various forms....

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...

We explore the far-reaching implications of low-wage subsidies on aggregate employment. Low-wage subsidies have three important effects. First, they promote employment of unskilled workers (who tend to be the ones who earn low wages). Second, by raising the payoff of unskilled work relative to...

In this study, I estimate the average causal treatment effect of grade retention on several educational outcome variables, such as completion of upper secondary school, graduation grades in math and German, as well as average final grade using a data set from Germany. The analysis relies on...

This paper examines the impact of in utero exposure to the Asian influenza pandemic of 1957 upon physical and cognitive development in childhood. Outcome data is provided by the National Child Development Study (NCDS), a panel study of a cohort of British children who were all potentially...

During the 2001-8 period, the employment rate of people with a disability remained remarkably low in most western economies, hardly responding to better macroeconomic conditions and favourable anti-discrimination legislation and interventions. Continuing health and productivity improvements in...

Using panel data from a unique survey of public primary schools in Uganda we assess the degree of leakage of public funds in education. The survey data reveal that on average, during the period 1991–5, schools received only 13 percent of what the central government contributed to the...

The identification of factors affecting birth weight is a key issue in human development due to its established associations with long-term health, educational and labour-market outcomes. This paper exploits intergenerational information on three generations (grandparents-parents-children) to...

Globally, 150 million adolescents report being victims of or engaging in peer-to-peer violence in and around school. One strategy to reduce this risk is to occupy youth in after-school programs (ASP). Yet, the question remains: how does peer group composition affect the effectiveness of an ASP?...

High student dropout rates are a continuing concern within higher education and have received considerable attention for decades. Despite numerous proposed interventions, it remains unclear which interventions are effective, and what the pivotal active ingredients are. This paper systematically...