Students' performance and behavior in elementary and higher education : three essays in the economics of education

The dissertation is located within the (behavioral) economics of education and focuses on institutional determinants of educational outcomes, evaluation of educational policies, and educational inequality. More specifically, after an introduction in chapter 1, the first part (chapter 2) seizes on one determinant of educational achievement, whereas the second part (chapters 3 and 4) is concerned with students' behavior towards federal interventions aiming at achieving efficiency and equality of opportunity in German higher education. Chapter 2 studies, together with Johanna Sophie Quis and Guido Heineck, whether the shift into daylight saving time (which affects sleep and the relative timing of school start) affects European elementary students' performance in international student assessments. Chapter 3 investigates, together with Michael Kalinowski, the existence of and reasons for non-take-up of German need-based student financial aid (BAföG), providing first-time evidence that two fifths of eligible students do not claim their benefits. Chapter 4 contains results from a randomized field-experiment in Germany. I analyze whether high-achieving students from non-academic families where nobody attained a university degree lack knowledge on merit-based aid and are, therefore, less likely to apply for scholarships than comparable students from academic families. Especially the last two parts of my dissertation underline the importance of “non-traditional” explanations for unequal access to higher education (funding) and discuss starting points to increase equality of opportunity in Germany.