School choice research mostly focuses on academic outcomes. Policymakers increasingly view entrepreneurial traits as a non-cognitive outcome important for economic growth. We use international PISA-2006 student-level data to estimate the effect of private-school competition on students'...

We analyse the initial impact of a major school admission reform in Brighton and Hove. The new system incorporated a lottery for oversubscribed places and new catchment areas. We examine the post-reform changes in school composition. We locate the major winners and losers in terms of the quality...

This paper investigates the relationship between educational attainment and truancy. Using data from the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales, we estimate the causal impact that truancy has on educational attainment at age 16. Problematic is that both truancy and attainment are measured as...

In early 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released the findings from a large, experimental evaluation of the Head Start program. A common interpretation of the findings is that they show "small" effects, which has lead to, among other things, calls to improve the efficacy...

Student performance has been tested by various surveys at the international level in recent years, using different aims and methodologies. On the basis of a comparative analysis, this paper aims to describe the differences in performance between Italian regions, subjects and ages or grades. All...

We combine two empirical observations in a general equilibrium occupational choice model. The first is that entrepreneurs have more control than employees over the employment of and accruals from assets, such as human capital. The second observation is that entrepreneurs enjoy higher returns to...

This paper examines how productivity effects of human capital and innovation vary at different points of the conditional productivity distribution. Our analysis draws upon two large unbalanced panels of 6,634 enterprises in Germany and 14,586 enterprises in the Netherlands over the period...

The literature suggests that competition among schools might increase quality. However, not much empirical evidence is present as only a few countries allow competition at a large scale. One exception is the Netherlands. Free parental choice is the leading principle of the Dutch education system...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the 'International Small Business Journal' (2013). Volume 31, issue 1, pages 23-33.<P> Education is argued to be an important driver of the decision to start a business. The measurement of its influence, however, is difficult since it is considered...</p>

This paper investigates how legal cannabis access affects student performance. Identification comes from an exceptional policy introduced in the city of Maastricht which discriminated legal access based on individuals’ nationality. We apply a difference-in-difference approach using...