The impact of compulsory schooling laws as well as the abolition of early selection by ability remain important issues in the educational debate. These issues were the focus of a major education reform in Sweden which was implemented in the 60s. The reform was preceded by a ``social experiment''...

Empirical research on the determinants of right and left-wing extremist election successes is still dominated by descriptive statistical methods. The existing literature in political economy and political science mainly relies on interviews and survey results as well as on qualitative analyses...

Using that schools are in session during the school year and out of session during the summer, it is possible to isolate the effect of schooling on learning. This natural experiment situation can also be used to see whether schooling compensates for disadvantageous social backgrounds. Using a...

This paper makes use of the regional variation in schooling legislation within the German secondary education system to estimate the causal effect of central exit examinations on student performance. We propose a difference-in-differences framework that exploits the quasi-experimental nature of...

Economic theory advances various arguments in favor of and against privatizing education. In this paper we investigate the extent to which these arguments influence voters' opinions. We analyze two popular referenda in which some 400,000 voters in two Swiss cantons expressed their opinions on...

The question of how technology affects learning has been at the center of recent debates over educational inputs. In 1994, the Israeli State Lottery sponsored the installation of computers in many elementary and middle schools. This program provides an opportunity to estimate the impact of...

Education has been one of the key determinants of economic growth around the world since 1965. In this paper, we discuss three different measures of education, and consider their relationship to the distribution of income as measured by the Gini coefficient as well as to economic growth across...