Research suggests that teenage childbearing adversely affects both the outcomes of the mothers as well as those of their children. We know that low-educated women are more likely to have a teenage birth, but does this imply that policies that increase educational attainment reduce early...

Given the wide use of childcare subsidies across countries, it is surprising how little we know about the effect of these subsidies on children's longer run outcomes. Using a sharp discontinuity in the price of childcare in Norway, we are able to isolate the effects of childcare subsidies on...

Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one-year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other...

A variety of public campaigns, including the Just Say No campaign of the 1980s and 1990s that encouraged teenagers to Just Say No to Drugs, are based on the premise that teenagers are very susceptible to peer influences. Despite this, very little is known about the effect of school peers on the...

Using a variance decomposition framework which provides bounds on the effect of families and neighbourhoods, we find important effects of family characteristics and residential location on educational attainment and adult earnings in Norway. Neighbourhoods are less important than families, as...

School quality is hard to define and measure. It is influenced by not only school expenditures, but also characteristics that are hard to measure like norms and peer effects among teachers and pupils. Furthermore, family background and community characteristics are important in explaining...

Despite important policy implications associated with the allocation of education resources, evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive. In part, this is due to endogenous allocation; families sort themselves non-randomly into school districts and school districts...

Whether increasing resource use in schools has a positive effect on pupil performance has occupied governments, parents and researchers for decades. A main challenge when trying to answer this question is to separate the effects of school resources from the effects of pupils? family background,...

Job reallocation is considered to be a key characteristic of well-functioning labor markets, as more productive firms grow and less productive ones contract or close. However, despite its potential benefits for the economy, there are significant costs that are borne by displaced workers. We...

How do families influence the ability of children? Cognitive skills have been shown to be a strong predictor of educational attainment and future labor market success; as a result, understanding the determinants of cognitive skills can lead to a better understanding of children's long run...