We study attitudes to education among English adolescents. Using PISA data, we show there is considerable variation in these attitudes depending on background: immigrant students have substantially and significantly more positive attitudes to school than native children, a difference that...

We study whether independent-school competition involves a trade-off between pupil wellbeing and academic performance. To test this hypothesis, we analyse data covering pupils across the OECD, exploiting historical Catholic opposition to state schooling for exogenous variation in...

We study the relationship between adult education and training (AET) and employment in Sweden. Exploiting rich data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, and using an inverse-probability weighted regression-adjustment estimator, we find that AET is positively...

Declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancy necessitate a higher labor participation rate among older people in order to sustain pension systems and boost economic growth. At the same time, researchers have only recently begun to pay attention to the health effects of a longer...

Cross-sectional tests of the Jack-of-All-Trades theory of entrepreneurship invariably conclude that accumulation of balanced skill-mix across different fields of expertise stimulates entrepreneurship. Yet, none of these considers individual unobservable characteristics which may simultaneously...

We use data on international chess tournaments to study the relationship between age and mental productivity in a brain-intensive profession. We show that less talented players tend to leave the game in the earliest phases of their career. When the effects of age on productivity vary with...

Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that paternal unemployment has a surprisingly positive causal effect on the "Big 5" personality traits of children aged 17 to 25. In particular, our results from longitudinal value-added models for personality suggest...