An important piece of the major fiscal and structural reforms undertaken in Argentina in the early 1990’s was the decentralization of education services from the federal government to the provincial governments. The theoretical literature does not find absolute superiority of centralization or decentralization in the provision of public services. We evaluate empirically the effect of the decent...

In history and in everyday life it has often been observed that on one hand religion can enhance peaceful behaviour, but that it can on the other hand as well lead to violent extremism and intolerance. This paper argues with the help of a simple theoretical con‡ict model that the level of education matters crucially for the impact religion has on the likelihood of con‡ict. In particular, in a l...

Understanding the relationship between grading practices and student evaluations is especially important in higher education because of the increasing importance of this instrument in the promotion process. If evaluations can be increased by giving higher grades, then they are a flawed instrument for the evaluation of teaching. Further, this process may be contributing to the inflation of grade...

This paper addresses the implications of transitory changes in labor market conditions for low versus high educated workers on the decision to acquire education. To identify this effect, I use the improvement in labor market prospects of low educated workers motivated by the increases in construction employment and wages during the recent housing boom. The estimation strategy is based on the fa...

The recent federal education bill, No Child Left Behind, requires states to test students in grades 3 to 8 each year and to judge school performance on the basis of these test scores. While intended to maximize student learning, there is little empirical evidence about the effectiveness of such policies. This study examines the impact of an accountability policy implemented in the Chicago Publi...

Most OECD countries experience high unemployment rates and declining growth in higher educational attainment. An often suggested government policy is therefore to allocate resources towards formal schooling for adults. However, returns on such investments are uncertain and the foregone earnings are potentially large. We use Swedish population register data from 1982 to 2011 to estimate average ...

Is the intergeneration educational link due to nature or nurture? In order to separate the nature (genetic) and nurture (education) effects, researchers have relied on situations where two individuals are specifically affected by one or the other effects but not both; typically comparing twins’ offspring or natural and adopted children. These studies estimate that maternal schooling has no effe...

We provide robust and compelling evidence of the marked impact of tertiary education on the economic growth of less developed countries and of its the relatively smaller impact on the growth of developed ones. Our results argue in favor of the accumulation of high skill levels especially in technologically underdeveloped countries and, contrary to common wisdom, independently of the fact that t...

Jobs for Young University Graduates: Is It Worth Having a Degree? This study addresses the question: Are workers who hold a university degree increasingly filling job openings meant for people with lower levels of schooling? It focuses on Portugal, where the higher education system has been expanding at a fast pace and the share of university graduates in total labour force has been increasing,...

We show that the treatment effect estimated by standard methods such as regression discontinuity analysis or difference-in-differences may contain a transient “learning effect” is entangled with long-term of treatment. This learning occurs when variable interest agents’ efforts, and control correspond to success failure: failure gives agents information about how much their effort matters, cons...