Spence (1973) noted that individuals' choice of educational quantity — measured by years of schooling — may stem partially from a desire to signal their ability to the labor market. This paper asks if individuals' choice of educational quality — measured by college reputation — may...

This paper estimates the effects of a 2008 policy that eliminated tuition fees at public universities in Ecuador. We use a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits variation across cohorts differentially exposed to the policy, as well as geographic variation in access to public...

The literature shows a wage premium for graduates from high quality, elite, or more selective universities. The results, however, exist for countries with a clear hierarchy of top universities, such as the US, England, and Australia. I evaluate if such an effect also exists in Germany, a country...

Using an unbalanced panel of close to 12,000 academic records, and difference-in-differences models and event study analyses with individual fixed effects, we evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on lower-income students' academic performance during the spring 2020 semester relative to...

We study the impact of higher education financing on the academic aspirations of teenagers and of their parents. We exploit a reform which introduced a large increase in the maximum university tuition fees and a more redistributive student loan system, both of which varied across the UK's...

Recent descriptive work suggests the type of college education (field or institution) is an important but neglected pathway through which individuals sort into homogeneous marriages. These descriptive studies raise the question of why college graduates are so likely to marry someone within their...

Recent descriptive work suggests the type of college education (field or institution) is an important but neglected pathway through which individuals sort into homogeneous marriages. These descriptive studies raise the question of why college graduates are so likely to marry someone within their...

Transition to online teaching during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to various concerns about educational quality. So far, researchers have mainly focused on the effects on school teaching. This paper looks at the effects on a large Italian university (University of Pavia,...