We provide new evidence on the effect of minority elected state representatives on economic development and schooling in India. Using data on candidates in all state assembly elections from 1974 to 2017, we exploit two discontinuities in the reservation of constituencies for Scheduled Castes...

This study examines how parenting styles predict children's lifetime outcomes. Using a Swedish dataset which combines rich survey information on parenting styles with administrative records tracking children over five decades, we find that authoritarian parenting is negatively associated with...

We evaluate a two year school development program aimed at enhancing the quality of education for recent migrant students and Swedish language learners through customized packages of professional development for teachers and support of school man-agement. We exploit the pairwise randomized roll...

In this paper, we show that gender gaps in performance observed in high-stakes exams, relative to low-stakes exams, are partially shaped by the context of exam preparation. We examine the role of exam preparation using data from French elite STEM higher education programs. First, we document a...

Opportunity costs are central to economic decision-making but often neglected. In a pre-registered experiment with 2,222 German university freshmen, one treatment provides salary information; another additionally frames it as the opportunity cost of delayed graduation. Only the opportunity cost...

This article assesses the impact of parents working from home on children's academic performance in high school. Using French data, we draw on the fact that, within each major social group, not all families have been equally exposed to the recent rise in work from home (WFH), depending on the...

How did the US become a land of opportunity? Previous historical research on intergenerational mobility has focused on father-son income correlations, masking the role of mothers. We introduce a new mobility measure that incorporates both parents’ human capital, develop a latent variable...

This paper examines the role of sibling sex composition as a potential explanation of the transmission of parental advantages to the next generation. The presence of a brother affects the family environment and parents' decisions, influencing the siblings' labour market outcomes in the long...

Using surveys with Danish students transitioning to secondary education, we study mental models of how gender and parental education shape academic performance. Students hold heterogeneous beliefs about performance gaps by gender and parental background, which appear to be shaped by...

This paper studies how parental leave quotas may foster a more gender-equal division of parental responsibilities by increasing fathers' uptake of leave beyond the reserved amount. Specifically, the paper examines whether the introduction and expansion of 30-days parental leave quotas in Sweden...

Work-related burnout and stress-related sickness absence have become increasingly prevalent, but evidence on which workplace features shape workers’ mental health remains limited. Using population-level Swedish register data covering all lower- and upper-secondary teachers from 2006–2024, we...

Immigrants across Europe earn less and work in lower-quality jobs than natives, but the mechanisms underlying these disparities remain poorly understood. This paper asks whether immigrant disadvantage reflects barriers to accessing good jobs or skill deficits that persist even within similar...

Digital skills are becoming increasingly more important in the labor market as demand for them is increasing in all sectors. This paper explores the determinants of digital skill acquisition and estimates the impact of digital skills on wages in developing countries by using the latest round of...

Myanmar’s education system stands at a critical juncture, shaped by overlapping crises and significant resilience. Following years of conflict, political instability, and economic stress, recent data reveal both progress and persistent vulnerabilities. Primary school enrollment has largely...

Exceptional talent accounts for a disproportionate share of innovation, yet many individuals with exceptional ability may never realize their potential. Whether expanding access to advanced training generates learning gains remains an open question. We study this using a randomized controlled...

This paper examines whether Ghana's education reforms have increased intergenerational education mobility. Using the newly constructed Ghana Education and Labour Series-a harmonized dataset combining multiple rounds of the Ghana Living Standards Survey-we track intergenerational education...

School attendance has become a topic of international concern, particularly in light of the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to long-lasting challenges in attendance (Dee, 2024; Fuller et al., 2024; Lichand et al., 2024; Tomaszewski et al., 2023). Some evidence suggests that...

We develop a model that links education-outcome gradients to intergenerational transmission, distinguishing joint from parent-specific channels under assortative mating. Using Danish administrative data on family quartets, we estimate the own education-outcome gradient and, in addition,...

International research has pointed to the longer-term impact of school absence on outcomes in early adulthood. This study uses Growing Up in Ireland data to document the consequences of absence in primary and post-primary education for a range of outcomes in (early) adulthood, including...

China's One-Child Policy (OCP) restricted most couples to a single birth, leading to a rapid increase in the prevalence of only children. Using longitudinal data and a regression discontinuity design around the policy's start, we estimate the effects on grandchildren's human capital. We find...

This study is the first to analyse the determinants and wage impacts of vertical educational mismatches in the wage sector in Indonesia. This study is also the first to examine the wage effect of vertical educational mismatch based on the fields of study, gender, and spatial conditions of the...

The Head Start program, launched in 1965 and targeted to children from disadvantaged backgrounds, remains the largest early childhood care and education (ECE) program in the United States and the only one deployed at the federal level. As such, the Head Start literature spans several decades and...

We estimate the causal effect of attending elite schools in England, Scotland, and Wales on human capital and labor market outcomes for cohorts of children from the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study. For identification, we employ a nonparametric...

Which poverty context matters for long-term outcomes-family or community, economic or social? We construct a measure of poverty along these dimensions and analyze individual-level longitudinal data spanning 21 years in Indonesia to examine the long-term outcomes associated with different types...

Students' university experience includes both academic and non-academic outcomes, which are shaped by the educational environment in which students interact. We refer to this environment as university climate and measure it along three dimensions: conformity to masculinity-related attitudes and...

We estimate the effect of receiving a higher grade on an academic high school exit exam on labor-market outcomes in adulthood. Identification is based on comparing students on different sides of grade cutoffs. Using nationwide Finnish register data, we find that better grades lead to higher...

We apply a novel approach to estimate the effects of exposure to peers with different attributes by using the predetermined leave-own-out attributes of all classmates in randomly assigned classes. This strategy allows a behavioural interpretation of the peer effect over and above the pure...

This paper provides large-scale evidence linking the economic effects of childcare programs to social skills measured in adulthood. We examine Finland's first national public childcare program, and document that it increased parental labor supply -through retirement- while reducing the...

This study examines how parenting styles predict children’s lifetime outcomes. Using a Swedish dataset which combines rich survey information on parenting styles with administrative records tracking children over five decades, we find that authoritarian parenting is negatively associated with...

This paper provides large-scale evidence linking the economic effects of childcare programs to social skills measured in adulthood. We examine Finland's first national public childcare program, and document that it increased parental labor supply - through retirement - while reducing the...

Financial literacy is an important prerequisite for making informed financial decisions, but it remains low, especially among women and older people. Internalized stereotypes can undermine confidence and subsequently affect behavior in financial matters, leading to suboptimal decisions. This...

Schools are increasingly restricting cellphones worldwide amid concerns about achievement and mental health, yet causal evidence on school-level bans remains mixed. We examine cellphone restrictions in Chile before the pandemic, where teacher discretion over cellphone use generated...

This study examines how parenting styles predict children's lifetime outcomes. Using a Swedish dataset which combines rich survey information on parenting styles with administrative records tracking children over five decades, we find that authoritarian parenting is negatively associated with...

This study leverages whole-of-population linked census-administrative data to examine gender gaps in educational outcomes from early primary school through early adulthood in Australia and to assess the contribution of socioeconomic factors to these gaps. We find that females outperform males...

This paper examines the impact of neighbourhood social interactions on a household's ability to produce their child's scholastic achievement. A time-varying stochastic frontier model and a spatial Durbin model are used to estimate endogenous and contextual neighbourhood effects on household...