Education is an essential input for economic development and is one of the basic human rights. Basically, education provides and contributes to the quality of human assets to achieve all development goals, such as poverty reduction, gender empowerment, improving human capital, and enhances...

This paper investigates how the peer gender composition in university affects students' major choices and labor market outcomes. Women who are randomly assigned to more female peers become less likely to choose male-dominated majors, and they end up in jobs in which they work fewer hours and...

Outcomes related to the wellbeing of students are increasingly being recognized as valuable objectives for education systems. In this study, we ask if high-stakes testing affects school-related stress among students and if there are gender differences in these effects. We combine macro-level...

In a world crisis generated by the spread of Covid-19, beyond the negative consequences, fast and efficient responses were needed from the authorities across the world, both for the scenario in which the crisis was on a short period and education would have recovered quickly, and especially for...

Using the 2013 China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), we study the impact of a 2008 inclusive education policy, through which the central government mandated urban public schools to exempt migrant children from tuition and temporary schooling fees. Whereas the non-disclosure rule regarding...

This study examines the gendered effects of early and sustained exposure to high-performing peers on female educational trajectories. Exploiting random allocation to classrooms within middle schools, we measure the effect of male and female high performers on girls' high school placement...

Although many students suffer from anxiety and depression, and often identify school pressure and concerns about their futures as the main reasons for their worries, little is known about the consequences of a selective school environment on students’ mental health. Using a regression...

To investigate the effects of reducing the intensity of tracking, this study exploits reforms across German states which combined the two lower secondary school tracks, sometimes additionally offering the possibility to acquire a university entrance qualification. Using a...

This study aims to identify the main determinants of student performance in reading and maths across eight European Union countries (Austria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, and Slovenia). Based on student-level data from the OECD’s PISA 2018 survey and by means of the...

Elisabeth Grewenig prepared this study while she was working at the Center for Economics of Education at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in March 2021 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the LMU Munich. It consists of five distinct empirical essays that...