Any system of primary and secondary schools involves explicit or implicit mechanisms that ration not only financial but also nonfinancial inputs into education production. This chapter focuses primarily on such mechanisms as they relate to the sorting of parents and children into schools and...

Choice and competition in education have found growing support from both policy makers and academics in the recent past. Yet, evidence on the actual benefits of market-oriented reforms is at best mixed. Moreover, while the economic rationale for choice and competition is clear, in existing work...

Choice and competition in education have found growing support from both policy makers and academics in the recent past. Yet, evidence on the actual benefits of market-oriented reforms is at best mixed. Moreover, while the economic rationale for choice and competition is clear, in existing work...

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 presents economic models of child development that capture the essence of recent findings from the empirical literature on skill formation. The goal of this essay is to provide a theoretical framework for interpreting the evidence from a vast empirical literature, for guiding the next...

Using a representative sample of Ecuadorian young women’s households, this paper focuses on the role played by education in shaping fertility choices and labor market participation. Education, which is found to be endogenous with respect to teenage childbearing, is instrumented by a reform...