Life skills, sometimes referred to as noncognitive skills or personality traits (e.g. conscientiousness or locus of control-the belief to influence events and their outcomes), affect labor market productivity. Policy makers and academics are thus exploring whether such skills should be taught at...

Using a unique dataset which is rich in both family background and attainment in education, we find that educational attainments at the end of the compulsory schooling stage are powerful predictors for post-compulsory educational choices in England. In particular, the single academic success...

Teacher quality is a key factor in improving student academic achievement. As such, educational policymakers strive to design systems to hire the most effective teachers. This paper examines the effects of a national policy reform in Colombia that established a merit-based teacher-hiring system...

Low-income individuals in developing countries are often inadequately prepared for employment because they lack key labor market skills. We explore how employability and wage outcomes are related to English language skills in a novel, large-scale randomized field experiment conducted in Delhi,...

Sarah Gust führte diese Studie während ihrer Tätigkeit am ifo Institut durch. Die Studie wurde im September 2024 abgeschlossen und als Dissertation an der Volkswirtschaftlichen Fakultät der LMU München angenommen. Sie besteht aus drei eigenständigen empirischen Essays, die...

The entrepreneurship literature has long recognized the importance of education in fostering successful self-employment, yet a significant gap exists in our understanding of how the political economy of vocational education systems influences the financial success of self-employed graduates. We...

Foreign language skills represent a form of human capital that can be rewarded in the labor market. Drawing on data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007, this is the first study estimating returns to foreign language skills in Turkey. We contribute to the literature on the economic value of...

Foreign language skills represent a form of human capital that can be rewarded in the labor market. Drawing on data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007, this is the first study estimating returns to foreign language skills in Turkey. We contribute to the literature on the economic value of...