Expanding parental choice in education may increase system-wide productivity if parents select schools that form a specifically good match with their children. I investigate the effect of attending a preferred school on student achievement in London primary schools. I exploit as good as random...

I show that parents select schools by considering attributes of the student-school match that improve the learning outcomes beyond average school quality. Using the centralized algorithm for offers to primary school in London, I compare the achievement of students who are as good as randomly...

Girls tend to outperform boys in reading tests, while they usually lag behind boys in math. However, the size of the gender gap varies to a great extent between countries. While the existing literature explains these differences as being mainly due to cultural factors, this paper explores...