We show why considering a number of education-dependent covariates in the wage equation decreases coefficient of education in the wage equation. We use a meta-analysis of results for Portugal to show, empirically, that this is the case. The coefficient decreases when we use covariates that can...

An individual's human capital has a strong influence on earnings. Yet individual, worker-level estimations of earnings rarely include the characteristics of co-workers or detailed firm-level controls. In this paper, we use a unique matched workerworkplace dataset to estimate the effect on own...

The impact of schools on student achievement has been of great interest for the last four decades. This study examines trends of school effects on student achievement employing three national probability samples of high school seniors: NLS:72, HSB:82, and NELS:92. Hierarchical linear models are...

The paper addresses the two-fold rise in teacher-student ratio in the American K-12 school system in the post-World War II period accompanied by the evidence of a decline in the relative quality of teachers. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium framework for analyzing the teacher...

The tracking of pupils by ability into elite and non-elite schools represents a controversial policy in many countries. There is no consensus on how large the elite track should be and little agreement on the effects of any further increase in its size. This paper presents a natural experiment...

Ample evidence is available for the effect of competition on educational quality as only a few countries allow large scale competition. In the Netherlands free parental choice is present since the beginning of the 20th century, which can be characterized as a full voucher program with 100%...

Understanding the economic payoff to human investments is very important from the standpoint both of individuals and of society. Correctly estimating these impacts necessitates having a well-developed idea of the microeconomic determinants of human behavior. Without this, empirical analyses of...

There has been a rising interest in understanding better the impact of college choices on wages, an interest motivated by concerns about increasing wage inequalities, about increasing costs of elite colleges, and about the perceived increasing roles of highly educated individuals in maintaining...