We investigate how the intensity of Ramadan affects educational outcomes by exploiting spatio-temporal variation in annual fasting hours. Longer fasting hours are related to increases in student performance in a panel of TIMMS test scores (1995â 2019) across Muslim countries but not other...

When students themselves enjoy large degrees of freedom in determining the duration oftheir studies, it results in a fairly large degree of interindividual variance in terms of time-todegree.This paper investigates individual time-to-degree in a model where studentsdetermine the optimum...

We investigate the impact of the presence of university dropouts on the academic success of first-time students. Our identification strategy relies on quasi-random variation in the proportion of returning dropouts. The estimated average zero effect of dropouts on first- time students' success...

Although instruction time is an important and costly resource in education production, there is a remarkable scarcity of research examining the effectiveness of its use. We build on the work of Lavy (2015) using the variance of subject-specific instruction time within Switzerland to determine...

In this paper we assess the effectiveness of a social public procurement policy in Switzerland that gives firms that train apprentices a preferential treatment. We estimate the effectiveness of this social procurement policy on a firm's training participation, training intensity, and training...

Men are generally found to be more willing to compete than women and there is growing evidence that willingness to compete is a predictor of individual and gender differences in career decisions and labor market outcomes. However, most existing evidence comes from the top of the education and...

This study investigates the determinants and motives of professionals who change career to vocational teaching. The framework for this study is the Swiss vocational education system, which requires that teachers of vocational subjects must have a prior career in that specific field. Thus, to...

A number of studies have long shown that the probability of studying at university is influenced by the distance to the next university. This study shows for the first time that distance to university also influences the choice of subject/faculty and institution. Moreover, these findings are...

Dual apprenticeship training is a market-driven form of education at the upper secondary level, taking place in firms as well as in vocational schools. So far, little is known about the impact of the business cycle on the number of apprenticeship programs offered by firms. Using panel-data of...

Although there is evidence that apprenticeship training can ease the transition of youth into the labour market and thereby reduce youth unemployment, many policy makers fear that firms will cut their apprenticeship expenditures during economic crises, thus exacerbating the problem of youth...