This paper examines the economic and empirical foundations of the aggregate evidence on the effect of schooling quality on earnings. A common framework is presented which nests all previous studies as special cases. We discuss two crucial identifying assumptions and test them. The first...

Many studies have demonstrated that Mexico's conditional cash transfer program, PROSPERA, has substantial effects on educational attainment. Nevertheless, little evidence exists on whether increases in time spent in school have led to higher learning in the context of the poor areas where...

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic model, which integrates value‐added and school‐choice models, to evaluate grade‐by‐grade and cumulative impacts of the Mexican Prospera conditional cash transfer (CCT) program on educational achievement. The empirical application advances the...

This paper studies the determinants of children's scores on tests of cognitive achievement in math and reading. Using rich longitudinal data on test scores, home environments, and schools, we implement alternative specifications for the production function for achievement and test their...