We employ a combination of school fixed effects and IV estimation to estimate the effect of class size on student performance in 18 countries. Using the random part of the class-size variation between two adjacent grades within individual schools allows us to identify causal class-size effects....

We examine whether the sorting of differently achieving students into differently sized classes results in a regressive or compensatory pattern of class sizes for a sample of national school systems. Sorting effects are identified by subtracting the causal effect of class size on performance...

We estimate the relative roles of factor inputs and productivity in explaining the level of economic development, which is measured as output per worker. For a large sample of countries, we show that alternative identifying productivity assumptions and alternative measures of human capital have...

International comparative studies of student performance have initiated political discussions in countries all over the world on how to improve the educational achievement of students. The empirical evidence suggests that central exams help to achieve higher student performance. Central exams...

We try to identify which economic factors might be responsible for the large international differences in student performance. We present time series evidence for a number of European countries which suggests that rising educational expenditures obviously did not improve student performance....

We estimate changes in the productivity of schooling for six East Asian countries. Our productivity measure is based on changes in the relative price of schooling. A rising price of schooling relative to other labor-intensive service sectors should indicate declining relative schooling...