Danzer and Lavy (2018) study how the duration of paid parental leave affects children's educational performance using data from PISA. An extension of the maximum duration from 12 to 24 months in Austria had no statistically significant effect on average, but the authors highlight the existence...

This paper revisits the link between education-based marriage market sorting and income inequality. Leveraging Danish administrative data, we develop a novel categorization of marriage market types based on the starting wages and wage growth trajectories associated with educational programs:...

What makes a good teacher? This is one of the central questions in the economics of education. General teacher qualifications, such as education level or advanced degrees, tend to be poor predictors of teacher quality. Instead, some studies have shown that subject-specific qualifications predict...

We study the age-dependent malleability of patience via educational interventions designed to foster financial decision-making capabilities and to induce a more future-oriented mindset. We conduct a field experiment covering both youths and adults in Uganda and aggregate evidence from earlier...

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...

A large literature documents a positive correlation between parental income and child test scores. In this paper, we study whether this relationship, the dependence of the cognitive skills of children on the socioeconomic resources of their parents, varies across race. Using education data...

It is well established that boys perceive themselves to be better in mathematics than girls, even when their ability is the same. We examine the drivers of this male overconfidence in self-assessed mathematics ability using a longitudinal study of twins. This allows us to control for family...

We study the impact that participation in the Erasmus program produces on a number of labor market outcomes. By implementing a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design, we show that participating in the international mobility program positively affects the probability of being employed three years...

Class size reduction mandates are frequent and invariably justified by studies reporting positive effects on student achievement. Yet other studies report no effects, and the literature as a whole awaits correction for potential publication bias. Moreover, if identification drives results...

We study how managerial practices of school principals affect student performance and aspirations. We link administrative data on secondary Italian students to the management scores of their school principals in 2011 and 2015 based on the World Management Survey methodology. The frequent...

This study examines the relationship between fertility decline and the reversal/narrowing of the gender gap in literacy/numeracy test scores. Drawing on Becker's Quantity-Quality (Q-Q) trade-off model, we propose that in a society such as China, where son-preference is prevalent, the Q-Q...

Increased education affects market and non-market outcomes. This paper investigates the causal impact of the extension of compulsory education from 6 to 9 years on females' education, marriage, and fertility outcomes in Thailand. Using data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) and a...

This paper estimates the effect of exposure to terrorist violence on education. Since terrorists may choose targets endogenously, we construct a set of novel instruments. To that end, we leverage exogenous variation from a local terrorist group's revenues and its affiliation with al-Qaeda....

During the pandemic, many measures were taken to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Some of these measures, such as school closures, directly affected students. Children from different backgrounds are likely to have different abilities to cope with the challenges of the pandemic and associated...

We investigate the stages of childhood at which parental job loss is most consequential for their child's education. Using Danish administrative data linking parents experiencing plant closures to their children, we compare end-of-school outcomes to matched peers and to closures hitting after...

Changing distributions of male and female types affect the measurement of educationbased marriage market sorting. We develop a weighting strategy that minimizes the distortion of sorting measures due to changing type distributions. The optimal weights reflect that female type distributions have...

This paper provides evidence on how having violence-exposed peers who migrated to nonviolent areas affects students' educational trajectories in receiving schools. To recover our estimates, we exploit the variation in local violence across different municipalities in the context of Mexico's war...

We study the impact of classroom rank on children's learning using a unique experiment from Ecuador. Within each school, students were randomly assigned to classrooms in every grade between kindergarten and 6th grade. Students with the same ability can have different classroom ranks because of...

This dissertation consists of four distinct empirical essays that address various aspects of the economics of education. Chapters 2 and 3 show that patience and risk-taking as intertemporal preferences are closely related to differences in student achievement across and within countries. Chapter...

Pietro Sancassani prepared this study while he was working at the Center for Economics of Education at the ifo Institut. The study was completed in March 2023 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the LMU Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical essays and...

We examine the mortality effects of a 1947 school reform in Japan, which extended compulsory schooling from primary to secondary school by as much as 3 years. The abolition of secondary school fees also indicates that those affected by the reform likely came from disadvantaged families who could...

Changing distributions of male and female types affect the measurement of education-based marriage market sorting. We develop a weighting strategy that minimizes the distortion of sorting measures due to changing type distributions. The optimal weights reflect that female type distributions have...

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 revisits the link between education-based marriage market sorting and income inequality. Leveraging Danish administrative data, we develop a novel categorization of marriage market types based on the starting wages and wage growth trajectories associated with educational programs:...

This paper revisits the link between education-based marriage market sorting and income inequality. Leveraging Danish administrative data, we develop a novel categorization of marriage market types based on the starting wages and wage growth trajectories associated with educational programs:...

During the Great Recession, the increase in Greece's unemployment rate was the highest in the European Union. However, there exists no multivariate study which has assessed the association between parental unemployment and adolescents' grades. The study utilised panel data from the same upper...

During the Great Recession, the increase in Greece's unemployment rate was the highest in the European Union. However, there exists no multivariate study which has assessed the association between parental unemployment and adolescents' grades. The study utilised panel data from the same upper...