This paper examines the impact of family income on the results of the newly introduced Unified State Examination (USE) in Russia. We argue that entrants from wealthy households have an advantage in terms of access to higher education, since income positively affects USE scores through a higher...

We estimate the effect of the Russian University excellence program (Project 5-100) initiated by the Government in 2013 on research performance of top Russian universities which received, on a competitive basis, substantial financial support within this program. To do so we use an econometric...

Social interactions with peers during learning have a significant impact on university students' academic achievement. As social ties are voluntary, an empirical estimation of peer effects is exposed to a potential endogeneity problem. To overcome this issue, we propose to define the peer group...

There is now a large literature on the correlates of prenatal androgen exposure and various individual measures of performance in sports, business, or schooling. However, there is still relatively limited evidence of the impact of prenatal androgens on life achievement. Using data from the...

We study hiring decisions made by competing universities in a simple dynamic framework, focusing on the structure of university finance. Universities with annual state-approved financing underinvest in high-quality faculty, while universities that receive a significant part of their annual...

This paper examines the investment strategies of individual depositors in Russia. Basing on the results of the poll covering depositors of eight Moscow banks we study the depositors' decision-making processes in making choice of the bank, determining whether it is reliable, monitoring of this...

Social influence is an important factor in learning and decision making. We estimate peer influence on student choice of specialization using data on undergraduate students of a Russian university. Information about individual social ties has been gathered from a questionnaire survey. We show...

Martin Finkelstein - PhD, Professor of Higher Education, Seton Hall University. E-mail: martin.finkelstein@gmail.com Kevin W. Iglesias - PhD candidate, Senior Research Associate, Center for College Readiness, Seton Hall University. E-mail: kevin.iglesias@student.shu.edu Address: Seton Hall...

We study hiring decisions made by competing universities in a dynamic framework, focusing on the structure of university finance. Universities with annual state-approved financing underinvest in high-quality faculty, while universities that receive a significant part of their annual income from...