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...

In January 2005, the ban on tuition in Germany has been declared unlawful. As a result, many 'Lander' developed plans to introduce tuition fees as soon as possible. It is shown in this paper, that the impact of tuition is very different among states. The willingness to pay varies not only by...

For over twenty years, a voucher system has been used in Chile to promote competition in the educational system between public and private schools. Attending a private subsidized school is associated with increased standardized test scores, but the apparent impact is relatively small....

In this paper we provide evidence for the impact of public funding on enrolment of students in college. We use a panel for European countries and apply instrumental variables techniques to find that public funding for schooling; regardless at what level; does increase college enrolment alike...

Following a landmark court ruling in 2005, more than half of Germany’s universities started charging tuition fees, which were subsequently abolished until 2015. We exploit the unusual lack of grandfathering in these policies to show that fees increase study effort and degree completion among...

We conduct a study under 2,400 third grade students at three large secondary comprehensive schools to evaluate a gifted and talented (GT) program with selective program admission based on past achievement. We construct three complementary estimates of the program's impact on student achievement....

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...