This Paper reports a randomized field experiment in which first year economics and business students at the University of Amsterdam could earn financial rewards for passing all first year requirements before the start of their second academic year. Participants were assigned to a high reward...

This Paper proposes a theoretical framework that combines the role of education as a cultural melting pot with its function as an instrument of human capital accumulation. It highlights the important role of public education in promoting social cohesion: requiring minority parents to pay twice...

This paper uses administrative longitudinal micro data on Junior High school students in Uruguay to measure the effect of grade failure on students’ subsequent school outcomes. Exploiting the discontinuity induced by a rule establishing automatic grade failure for pupils with more than three...

This Paper examines the education literature through the lens of sorting. It argues that how individuals sort across neighborhoods, schools and households (spouses), can have important consequences for the acquisition of human capital and inequality. It discusses the implications of different...

We provide an assessment of the French ZEP (Zones d’Education Prioritaire), a programme started in 1982 that channels additional resources to schools in disadvantaged areas and encourages the development of new teaching projects. Focusing on middle-schools, we first evaluate the impact of the...

A large school consolidation reform in the Netherlands changed minimum school size rules underlying public funding. The supply of schools decreased by 15 percent, but this varied considerably across municipalities. We find that reducing the number of schools by 10 percent increases pupils'...

We derive a theoretical model of effort in the presence of career concern based on the multi-unit all-pay auction, and closely inspired by the Italian academic market. In this model, the number of applicants, the number of new posts, and the relative importance of the determinants of promotion...

This paper investigates the determinants of academic achievements of post-reform undergraduate students of Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Academic achievements are measured with the students' grade point averages and time to graduation. The set of independent variables contains information on...

We study contestability in non-profit markets where non-commercial providers supply a homogeneous collective good or service through increasing-returns-to-scale technologies. Unlike in the case of for-profit markets, in the non-profit case the absence of price-based sales contracts between...

We show that warm-glow motives in provision by competing suppliers can lead to inefficient charity selection. In these situations, discretionary donor choices can promote efficient charity selection even when provision outcomes are non-verifiable. Government funding arrangements, on the other...