We study the effect of standardized external tests on students’ academic outcomes. We exploit the fact that only one of the 17 Spanish regions started doing and publishing the results of standardized tests in 2005 to apply a difference-in-difference methodology, using outcomes of the PISA...

Evaluamos un programa que introdujo la educación bilingüe en inglés y castellano en educación primaria en algunos colegios públicos de la Comunidad de Madrid en el año 2004. En este programa, los estudiantes no solo estudian inglés como idioma extranjero, sino que el inglés es la lengua...

This paper presents and evaluates estimation methods for dynamic nonlinear correlated random effects (CRE) models with unbalanced panels. Accounting for the unbalancedness is crucial in dynamic non-linear models and it cannot be ignored even if the process that produces it is completely at...

Recently, economists have established that culture—defined as a common set of preferences and beliefs —affects economic outcomes, including the levels of female labor force participation. Although this literature has argued that culture is transmitted from parents to children, it has also...

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the capacity of an economic system to absorb shocks depends on the specific pattern of interconnections established among financial firms. The key trade-off at work is between the risk-sharing gains enjoyed by firms when they become more interconnected...

We propose a model of the transition from a ”big man” authoritarian regime to either a liberal democracy or a communist regime. An underground organization votes on whether to summon a mass event. If it is summoned, the organization members decide whether to put effort into the event. Higher...

Immigration is an important problem in many societies, and it has wide-ranging effects on the educational systems of host countries. There is now a large empirical literature, but very little theoretical work on this topic. We introduce a model of family immigration in a framework where school...

An information transaction entails the purchase of information. Formally, it consists of an information structure together with a price. We develop an index of the appeal of information transactions, which is derived as a dual to the agent’s preferences for information. The index of...

We evaluate a program that introduced bilingual education in English and Spanish in primary education in some public schools of the Madrid region in 2004. Under this program students not only study English as a foreign language but also some subjects (at least Science, History and Geography) are...

We study the effect of standardized external tests on students’ academic outcomes. We exploit the fact that only one of the 17 Spanish regions started doing and publishing the results of standardized tests in 2005 to apply a difference-in-difference methodology, using outcomes of the PISA...