Students face four decision margins: (a) How many years to spend in school, (b) What to study, (c) How much effort to devote to learning per year and (d) Whether to disrupt or assist the learning of classmates. The thousands of studies that have applied human capital theory to the first two...

In recent decades, the USA has admitted a large number of foreign-born students into its educational system, raising concerns that the presence of foreign-born students would adversely impact the educational achievement of US-born students and incentivize them to move to private schools where...

Complementing prior research on income and educational mobility, we examine the intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities. We find that individuals’ cognitive skills are positively related to their parents’ abilities, despite controlling for educational attainment and family...

Using longitudinal data for Canada, we analyze the incidence and wage returns to employer supported course enrollment for men and women. Availability of confidential data, along with a relatively rich set of observable covariates, lead us to the estimation of difference-in-differences matching...

This article studies peer effects on the decision to enroll at university. To determine the social influence of peers, we use a measure encompassing the two major dimensions of social influence in the classroom: the ability and capacity of peers to exchange information about study options. This...

This paper examines how peer quality within distinct college majors affects graduation rates and major persistence. To mitigate the selection problem, we control for school-specific fixed effects, as well as very flexible application-admissions pattern fixed effects. Non-science peer quality...

Den ostdeutschen Flächenländern wird es in ihrer Gesamtheit zukünftig möglicherweise nicht mehr gelingen, die Effekte des demographischen Wandels durch Wanderungsgewinne zu kompensieren. Dies ist das Ergebnis verschiedener Projektionen zur zukünftigen Entwicklung der Studierendenzahl, die...

In this paper we look at the income distribution by cohort in Chile. We construct a synthetic panel from cross section surveys and estimate the income distribution for cohorts born between 1902 and 1978. We then decompose the evolution of these distributions into age, year and cohort effects....