Based on Baumol’s cost-disease model, we develop two alternative measures of the change in the productivity of schooling. Both productivity measures are based on changes in the relative price of schooling. We find that in most OECD countries the price of schooling has increased faster in...

New evidence confirms the conclusion of former surveys that the link between school resources and student performance is generally missing in educational production. While the conventional within-country cross-section evidence remains controversial, recent contributions which control for...

The paper suggests that international differences in educational institutions explain the large international differences in student performance in cognitive achievement tests. A microeconometric student-level estimation based on data for more than 260,000 students from 39 countries reveals that...

School-based management programs aim to improve education outcomes by involving parents in allocation decisions about external funds transferred to the school. This paper explores the effects of two school-based management programs on parental investment in schools via voluntary contributions....

This paper aims at formulating a theoretical model of educational attainment which is directly implementable empirically. The conceptual frame-work relies on the human capital theory, where individuals weigh the costs and the returns of education to decide on the optimal amount of education they...

The paper evaluates math performance at four high-need middle schools during a four-year intervention, which was designed to help math teachers diagnose students' areas of need and to design lesson plans responsive to those needs. Before the intervention began, the researchers pre-selected four...

Does relaxing strict school discipline improve student achievement, or lead to classroom disorder? We study a 2012 reform in New York City public middle schools that eliminated suspensions for non-violent, disorderly behavior. Math scores of students in more-affected schools rose by 0.05...

This paper investigates the long-term effects of local government education spending on child outcomes, including income, educational attainment, and family formation in adulthood. We propose a novel identification strategy which exploits quasirandom variation in demographic trends when there is...

This paper analyses the impact of family background, gender and cohort on educational attainment in France and Germany, relying on a theoretical model imbedded in the human capital theory. In a second step, the educational process is decomposed into school and post-school achievement. The same...