This paper investigates the question whether long-term human capital outcomes are affected by the duration of maternity leave, i.e. by the time mothers spend at home with their newborn before returning to work. Employing RD and difference-in-difference approaches, this paper exploits an...

Better child health is widely thought to improve school performance, and therefore post-school productivity. But most of the literature ignores that child health as well as child schooling reflects behavioral choices. Therefore the estimated impact of child health on child schooling in these...

In May 1991, 15,000 Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel in an overnight airlift and sorted in a haphazard and essentially random fashion to absorption centres across the country. This quasi-random assignment produced a natural experiment whereby the initial schooling environment of Ethiopian...

Proposals to use teachers' performance incentives have recently attracted considerable attention. However, there is very little experience with applying incentives in schools. This paper provides evidence on the causal effects of two programs: the first provided the school and its teachers with...

In Israel, as in many other countries, a high school matriculation certificate is required by universities and some jobs. In spite of the certificate's value, Israeli society is marked by vast differences in matriculation rates by region and socioeconomic status. We attempted to increase the...

School quality and grade completion by students are shown to be directly linked. Unique panel data on primary school–age children in Egypt permit estimation of behavioral models of school leaving that incorporate output‐based measures of school quality. With the student’s own ability and...