Using unique survey data on rural secondary school children, this paper evaluates the relative quality of Islamic secondary schools (i.e. madrasahs) in Bangladesh. Students attending registered madrasahs fare worse in maths and English than students attending non-madrasah schools. However,...

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...

We consider the challenges and implications of controlling for school contextual bias when modeling teacher preparation program effects. Because teachers are not randomly distributed across schools, failing to account for contextual factors in achievement models could bias preparation program...

The majority of empirical papers in the literature on school quality finds no or only small effects of class size and other school quality measures on students' outcomes. This paper analyses the effect of achievement heterogeneity and therefore the effect of the composition rather than the pure...

We study the long-term causal effects of attending a "better" school - defined as one with more advanced peers, more highly paid teachers, and a more academic curriculum - on the highest degree completed, wages, occupational choice, and unemployment. We base our analysis on a regression...

This paper estimates educational peer effects at the lower secondary level in Switzerland where different tracking systems coexist. Using a cross-sectional survey based on standardized questionnaires, the structure and magnitude of social interactions among classmates are analyzed. The results...

In this paper we make a systematic presentation of returns to education in Austria for the period 1981-1997. We use consistent cross-sections from the Mikrozensus and find falling returns over time. These falling returns are not caused by changes in the sample design and reduced willingness to...

Risk averse investors have to be compensated in higher expected returns when facing investments with higher risk. Education is an important investment therefore we use the results for 16 countries to test the positive relationship between return to education and the risk involved in this...

Based on the individual-level data of the PISA 2000 study, this note provides a detailed econometric analysis of the way that reading test scores are associated with individual and family background information and with characteristics of the school and class of the 15 to 16 year old respondents...

We use the European Community Household Panel, a harmonized data set covering the countries of the European Union, to provide detailed estimates of the returns to education. Our results can be summarized as follows. Firstly, average returns to education have been mostly stable during the second...