In a 1-year randomized controlled trial involving thousands of university students, we provide real-time private feedback on relative performance in a semester-long online assignment. Within this setup, our experimental design cleanly identifies the behavioral response to rank incentives (i.e.,...

Although universal childcare has become an essential tool to support child development, few economic studies analyze its effects on non-cognitive skills and little is known about causal effects on these skills in the long run. In this paper we go beyond short run analyses and examine the long...

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...

Gehen Kinder früher in eine Kindertageseinrichtung (Kita) als andere, zeigen sich noch im Jugendalter Unterschiede in den Persönlichkeitseigenschaften, die direkt mit dem Zeitpunkt des Kita-Eintritts zusammenhängen. So sind Jugendliche in Westdeutschland, die Ende der 1990er Jahre bereits mit...

This paper examines the effects of substantial changes in paid parental leave on child development and socio-economic development gaps. We exploit a German reform from 2007 that both expanded paid leave in the first year and removed paid leave in the second year following childbirth....

We estimate a system of three behavioral equations for Brazilian children and teenagers (school absenteeism, health status and child labor). We relieved the assumption of independence of the disturbance terms of each equation. Moreover, if causality mechanisms between these three components...

This article provides an analysis of the impact of the Qu'ebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP). Using a quasi-experimental design with survey data, we find that mothers spent on average 10 additional days with their newborn following the implementation of the insurance plan, and that both...

This paper evaluates the effect of extended maternal care on children's development at age 4 and 5 using observational data prior to and after the Canadian parental leave reform, which extended total paid leave from 25 to 50 weeks. In contrast with previous research on the Canadian parental...

The existence and causes of gender gaps in pay and in occupational choice have been increasingly at the centre of research in economics, sociology, psychology, managerial science, and other fields. The research findings across countries and over time generally suggest that gaps exist and are...

Migration across well-developed countries has been overlooked in the immigration literature. The present study is designed to evaluate the interplay between the effects of host countries' characteristics and self-selection patterns of immigrants from a highly developed country on their economic...