This paper provides estimates of the short-term individual returns to Higher Education (HE) in the United Kingdom, focusing on the effects of attending HE on the labour market outcomes for dropouts. Results show differential labour market outcomes for dropouts vs. individuals who have never...

This paper investigates relative earnings of individuals leaving tertiary education without a degree across 18 European countries employing survey data on adult workers. We find that, on average, university dropouts earn 8% more than those never enrolling into tertiary education, but 25% less...

International student exchange has become an important part of university-level studies and the EU plans to increase it significantly. We analyze how international student exchange affects students’ academic human capital. Using detailed student-level data from four faculties (Economics and...

This paper evaluates the effects of a high school curriculum reform on students ́probability to enroll at university and to choose Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) as college major. The reform that was introduced in one German state increased the degree of difficulty to...

This paper investigates the impact of studying the first-choice university subject on dropout and switching field of study for a cohort of students in Germany. Using detailed survey data, and employing an instrumental variable strategy based on variation in the local field of study availability,...

Academic education is generally rewarded by employers, but what happens to graduates if they are trained for two years less and have to compete with vocationally trained labor market entrants in a similar field of study? Focusing on Germany, we analyze labor market entries of individuals...

The matching literature commonly rules out that market design itself shapes agent preferences. Underlying this premise is the assumption that agents know their own preferences at the outset and that preferences do not change throughout the matching process. Under this assumption, a centralized...

We quantify the private and fiscal lifetime returns to higher education in Germany accounting for the redistribution through the tax-and-transfer system, cohort effects, and the effect of income pooling within households. For this purpose we build a dynamic microsimulation model that simulates...

The high school exit exam (HSEE) is rapidly becoming a standardized assessment procedure for educational accountability in the United States. I use a unique state-specific dataset to identify the effect of failing the HSEE on the likelihood that a student drops out early based on a Regression...