In this paper, we analyse increasing inequalities in French students’ cognitive skills during the 2000 decade, as France is the European country that experienced the strongest rise in performance variance at PISA tests. In particular, French educational inequalities increased due to a decline...

The Finnish comprehensive school reform replaced the old two-track school system with a uniform nine-year comprehensive school and significantly reduced the degree of heterogeneity in the Finnish primary and secondary education. We estimate the effect of this reform on the test scores in the...

The Finnish comprehensive school reform replaced the old two-track school system with a uniform nine-year comprehensive school and significantly reduced the degree of heterogeneity in the Finnish primary and secondary education. We estimate the effect of this reform on the test scores in the...

This paper examines the potential impacts of East-West migration of talents on the innovative capital and hence the long-run growth prospects in Eastern sending countries. Complementing previous studies, we examine the impact of high skill migration not only on the formation of human capital,...

Using data from three waves of PIRLS, this paper examines the effect of teacher quality on fourth-grade students' literacy test scores by exploiting variations induced by reforms in teachers' selection and/or reward schemes. We construct an original data set of relevant reforms taking place at...

Katharina Wedel prepared this study while she was working at the Center for the Economics of Education at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in September 2023 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at LMU Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical essays that...

The Finnish comprehensive school reform replaced the old two-track school system with a uniform nine-year comprehensive school and significantly reduced the degree of heterogeneity in the Finnish primary and secondary education. We estimate the effect of this reform on the test scores in the...

We quantify the causal effect of schooling on cognitive skills across 21 countries and the full distribution of working-age individuals. We exploit exogenous variation in educational attainment induced by a broad set of institutional reforms affecting different cohorts of individuals in...

El presente documento tiene por objetivo estudiar las desigualdades en la distribución de la formación académica de los docentes en Colombia. Para esto, se descomponen las desigualdades en la dotación de profesores según el grado de profesionalización de éstos a través de los índices de...

We quantify the causal effect of schooling on cognitive skills across 21 countries and the full distribution of working-age individuals. We exploit exogenous variation in educational attainment induced by a broad set of institutional reforms affecting different cohorts of individuals in...