We analyse the effects of a national student finance reform in the Netherlands, which replaced universal subsidies for higher education students by low-interest loans. We show that this reform had a large impact on education choices of secondary school students, lowering their enrolments in...

Equal educational opportunity is a core American value. Yet many children of low-income or minority racial or ethnic status attend public schools that are lower quality compared with those that white children or high-income children attend. And data indicate that, on average, low-income or...

We analyse the effects of a national reform of higher education financing on the decisionmaking of secondary school students in the Netherlands. The reform eliminated a universalsubsidy for higher education students and replaced it by a low-interest loan, causing asubstantive increase in the...

We investigate how the benefits of publicly financed higher education in Turkey are distributed among students with different socioeconomic backgrounds. We use a unique dataset from a nationally representative sample of university entrance exam takers together with data on government subsidies...

We model a higher education system that admits students according to their admission signal (e.g., matriculation GPA, SAT), which is, in turn, affected by their cognitive ability and socioeconomic background. We show that subsidizing education loans increases neither human capital stock nor...

This paper analyzes intergenerational mobility experiences of daughters and sons with respect to their fathers’ occupational status and documents changes in gender differences over time. While women have been in occupations with lower overall earnings potential, men are more likely to be in...

We study gender differences in the impacts of competition and subjective feedback, using an online game with pop-up texts and graphics as treatments. We define 8 groups: players see a Top 10 leaderboard or not (competitiveness), and within these, they receive no feedback, supportive feedback,...

There is significant heterogeneity in actual skill use within occupations even though occupations are differentiated by the tasks workers should perform during work. Using data on 12 countries which are available both in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies survey...

We study the impact of the gender composition of a scoreboard on the persistence and performance of players in an online game. Players were randomly selected into eight groups, defined along two dimensions: they saw high or average scores on a scoreboard (score level), and within each of these,...

Job loss leads to persistent adverse labor market outcomes, but assessments of gender differences in labor market recovery are lacking. We utilize plant closures in Denmark to estimate gender gaps in labor market outcomes and document that women face an increased risk of unemployment and lose a...