This volume was prepared by Susanne Link during her stay at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and the Department of Human Capital and Innovation of the Ifo Institute of Economic Research. It was accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Economics Departure of the University of Munich in...

Over the 2000s, many federal states in Germany shortened the duration of secondary school by one year while keeping the curriculum unchanged. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation due to the staggered introduction of this reform allows me to identify the causal effect of increased learning...

We analyze the impact of a recent initiative by the Australian Government to reduce disadvantage and improve children's welfare in Aboriginal communities. The policy – known as income management – quarantines 50 percent of welfare payments to be spent on priority goods (e.g., food, housing,...

Several studies show that young women start with lower wage expectations than men, even before entering the labor market and that this partly translates into the actual gender wage gap through effects on educational choice and the formation of reservation wages. Building on the theoretical...

Despite the growing evidence on the negative consequences of school bullying, there is no consensus regarding the most effective strategies to fight this problem. We study the impact of a randomized intervention to reduce school bullying in urban public schools in Peru, a country where violence...

Abiturientinnen und Abiturienten, die ihren Abschluss nach zwölf statt 13 Schuljahren erreichen (G8-Reform), nehmen nach dem Abitur seltener ein Studium auf: Um sechs Prozentpunkte sinkt im Vergleich zu einem Referenzszenario ohne G8-Reform der Anteil derer, die im Jahr des Abiturs oder im...

How can colleges find successful applicants? Criteria such as GPA, interviews, essays, and tests provide information about candidates, but which work and why? We shed light on these questions using unique data on the universe of objective and subjective rankings of all college applicants in...

This paper empirically investigates if making access to college easier with affirmative action can incentivize students to continue enrolment in secondary school and complete high-school. In 2008, the central government in India implemented the legislation for 27 percent of seats to be reserved...

We examine the consequences of compressing secondary schooling on students' university enrollment. An unusual education reform in Germany reduced the length of academic high school while simultaneously increasing the instruction hours in the remaining years. Accordingly, students receive the...

Firms may invest in ICT capital to enhance the productivity of agents on tasks where output depends on talent. When firms use costly education as a signal of comparative advantage for equilibrium task allocation, a low price of education leads to too few, and a high price of education leads to...