Various studies have examined how the study of economics affects students' views on economic phenomena, yet there is little evidence regarding its impact on teenagers. We study the effect of a recent curriculum reform introducing mandatory economic education on teenagers' attitudes towards economics in Southwest Germany. Our findings reveal that…

This paper is a review of the literature in economics on the effect on earnings of human capital investment from Adam Smith to the early 1980s. It discusses the use of the net present value (NPV) technique by Walsh and Friedman and Kuznets, and Becker's use of the NPV to estimate the internal rate of return to schooling. The first regression-based…

This paper analyzes the labor market impact of the Great Recession on overeducated and undereducated workers. In March 2008, the U.S. economy was near full employment with an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent. The next year, the unemployment rate peaked at 10.0 percent. The pace of the economic decline allows us to observe the workers'…

This paper evaluates the impact of education on inequality using the recentered influence function regression and standard inequality measures. Results indicate that between 2005 and 2010, the returns to education declined from the 10th to the 50th percentiles, but increased at the upper tail of the distribution. Inequality is lower in the…

This paper quantifies the economic benefits of educational improvement covered by the educational goals of the European Union, providing disaggregated projections for each of the EU countries and comparative economic results for alternative policy goals. Increased student achievement by 25 PISA points across the EU would be expected to add €71…

We analyze the 2007 European financial crisis' impact on the demand for new language skills. The crisis affected German-speaking regions less. Learning German became relatively more attractive for migration and trade. We construct a sub-national database for German as a foreign language exam (TestDaF) participation rates between 2001-2013 and…

This paper estimates returns to education during a period of sharp wage cuts in Greece, considering both the endogenous nature of education and women's self-selection. Findings suggest that dramatic wage declines were followed by sharp decreases in returns to education, while the documented convergence of returns between genders is an added…

State and federal governments invest millions of dollars in providing accurate and relevant information on expected outcomes to students pursuing higher education, but whether such information targets what students value about college is unclear. We use new survey data to identify the extent to which conventional indicators for college quality and…

Vietnam's economy and education system have had remarkable success in recent decades, yet there are concerns about the declining returns to higher education since 2008. We document this decline in returns to higher education and propose four hypotheses to explain it. Analysis of the VLSS/VHLSS and LFS data provides little evidence for three of…

Goal setting and grade loss aversion have individually been found to be effective motivators for student performance. We combine these two strategies to investigate, in a university setting, the effectiveness of grade endowment within a goal-setting framework. Our participants set grade goals which some must earn the traditional way, thus framed…

This study updates private returns to education in Uganda using consumption measures as an outcome variable, focusing on obtaining estimates using instrumental variables based on the introduction of the universal primary education policy. Unlike common findings from developed countries, the evidence from this study for a low-income country…

This paper investigated the impacts of education on women's empowerment in Kenya using six waves of nationally-representative KDHS data. Our study utilizes the change in educational structure in 1985 as an instrument and finds that women under the new system enhanced their schooling by approximately two years. One year of education prolongs…

This article studies a sample of displaced workers during the deep 1990s recession in Sweden and estimates the effect of secondary-level adult education on tertiary-level educational attainment. Plant closures and mass layoffs are used to identify job separations unrelated to individual productivity. Results indicate a large positive effect of…

In this paper, we estimate differences in examination behavior between immigrants and natives, by examining differences in the propensity to forego a passing grade on a final exam in order to retake that final exam. Retaking a final exam involves some level of uncertainty, so differences in examination behavior may be due to differences in…

Public sector universities offer in-state and out-of-state students similar amounts of institutional aid per ACT point. Private universities, however, offer in-state students over 65% more aid per ACT point than out-of-state students. I develop a general equilibrium model to explain why private universities price discriminate in favor of in-state…