Children's outcomes are strongly correlated with those of their neighbours. The extent to which this is causal is the subject of an extensive literature. An identification problem exists because people with similar characteristics are observed to live in close proximity. Another major difficulty...

In France, almost one in five 15 year olds lives in a home with at least two children per bedroom. More than 60% of these adolescents have been held back in primary or middle school, a proportion that is more than 20 points higher than it is on average for adolescents of the same age. This Paper...

Several recent studies based on 'exogenous' sources of variation in education outcomes show Instrumental Variables (IV) estimates of returns to schooling that are substantially higher than the corresponding Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates. Card (1995a) suggests that these results can be...

This study deals with educational production in Austria and is focused on the potential impact of schoolmates on students’ academic outcomes. We used PISA 2000 data to estimate peer effects for 15 and 16 year old students. The estimations yield substantial positive effects of the peer...

In recent years, the United States has witnessed significant growth in programs of financial and retirement education in the workplace. This phenomenon provides an opportunity to assess the effects of targeted education programs on financial choices. This paper uses a novel household survey to...

Using detailed data from North Carolina, we examine the frequency, incidence, and consequences of teacher absences in public schools, as well as the impact of an absence disincentive policy. The incidence of teacher absences is regressive: schools in the poorest quartile averaged almost one...

We study the formation of human capital and its transmission across generations when a society is assailed by an epidemic disease such as AIDS. We establish that the disease can severely retard economic growth, even to the point of leading to an economic collapse. We also show that the epidemic...

In spite of their relative vicinity Scandinavian countries and Central European countries (mainly Germany) have substantially different schooling institutions. While the former group of countries delays school tracking until age 16, the latter group anticipates differentiation between age 10 and...

The objective of this paper is to provide a statistical overview of Canadian universities' R&D activities and commercialization undertakings for the consideration of the Expert Panel on the Commercialization of University Research. The existing data suggest that Canadian universities play a...

Using factor analysis, ordinary least squares estimation, and maximum-likelihood ordered probit estimation, we examine the relationship between the socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods and their supply of licansed childcare. We find that supply of licensed childcare in Massachusetts is...