This paper exploits a unique universal educational policy - implemented in most German states between 2001 and 2008 - that compressed the academic-track high school curriculum into a (one year) shorter time span, thereby increasing time of instruction and share of curriculum taught per grade....

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...

Non-cognitive skills programs may be an important policy option to improve the academic outcomes of adolescents. In this paper, we evaluate experimentally the EPIS program, which is based on bi-weekly individual or small-group non-cognitive mediation short meetings with low-performing students....

We study a mentoring program that aims to improve the labor-market prospects of school-attending adolescents from disadvantaged families by offering them a university-student mentor. Our RCT investigates program effectiveness on three outcome dimensions that are highly predictive of...

There are large gaps in reading skills by family income among school-aged children in the United States. Correlational evidence suggests that reading skills are strongly related to the amount of reading students do outside of school. Experimental evidence testing whether this relationship is...