This paper studies the relative academic performance of students tracked or randomly assigned to South African university dormitories. Tracked or streamed assignment creates dormitories where all students obtained similar scores on high school graduation examinations. Random assignment creates...

This paper examines the association between the intensity, timing, and persistence of personal history of mobility on individual support for redistribution. Using both rounds of the Life in Transition Survey, the paper builds measures of downward mobility for about 57,000 individuals from 27...

Little is known about which of the skills that make up workers'human capital contribute to higher earnings. Past empirical evidence suggest that most of the return to schooling is generated by effects or correlates unrelated to the skills measured by the available tests. This paper uses the...

Few would contest that teachers are a very important determinant of whether students learn in school. Yet, in the face of compelling evidence that many students are not learning what they are expected to learn, how to improve teacher performance has been the focus of much policy debate in rich...

In 2000, the goal that, by 2015, all children will have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality, was set. Despite the progress in terms of student enrollment and completion, the quality of learning produced in developing countries remains poor. Existing...

Building on the earlier work, this paper provides an updated review of the private tutoring phenomenon in Vietnam in several aspects, including the reasons, scale, intensity, form, cost, and legality of these classes. In particular, the paper offers a comparative analysis of the trends in...

The international development community has been grappling with the challenges of implementing development programs and, consequently, with the design of practical approaches to attaining program objectives. This paper contributes to the emerging discussion on addressing the implementation...

This paper assembles a panel data set that measures cognitive achievement for 128 countries around the world from 1965 to 2010 in 5-year intervals. The data set is constructed from international achievement tests, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment and the Trends in...

This paper considers the effects of a gender-targeted conditional cash transfer program for girls in classes 6 to 8. It finds that the program is successful in increasing the enrollment of girls in classes 6 to 8 as intended. It also finds evidence to suggest that the program generated positive...

Conditional Cash Transfer programs are"...the world's favorite new anti-poverty device,"(The Economist, July 29 2010) yet little is known about the specific role of the conditions in driving their success. In this paper, we evaluate a unique cash transfer experiment targeted at adolescent girls...