Household assets as part of youth's family background have been found to have a significant impact on youth's academic achievement. In this study, the impact of household possessions on youth's academic achievement in the Ghana YouthSave experiment is investigated. Findings support the hypothesized positive direction of the impact of household…

We consider a framework in which the optimal admissions policy of a purely academic-quality oriented college implements preferential treatment in favor of the student from the deprived socioeconomic background which maximizes the competition between candidates. We find that the exact form of the preferential treatment admissions policy matters for…

The validity of family background variables instrumenting education in income regressions has been much criticized. In this paper, we use data from the 2004 German Socio-Economic Panel and Bayesian analysis to analyze to what degree violations of the strict validity assumption affect the estimation results. We show that, in case of moderate direct…

In this paper I investigate whether students self-select into the U.S. for-profit colleges or whether the choice of for-profit sector is accidental or due to the reasons external to the students (geographic exposure to for-profit providers, tuition pricing, or random circumstances). The main student-level data samples come from the National…

This paper investigates the effect of the timing of tracking on completion of higher education by exploiting unique variation from the Dutch education system. At the age of 12 Dutch students can enrol in tracked schools or in comprehensive schools. The comprehensive schools postpone enrolment into tracked classes by one or two years. OLS- and…

Governments introducing output parameters (e.g. graduation numbers) in the funding rule of universities believe that it will induce universities to raise their teaching efforts while educational standards will remain unaffected. In this article we first show on theoretical grounds that this desire can only be fulfilled if there exist positive…

This paper quantifies the extent of student-college "academic undermatch," which occurs when a student's academic credentials permit them access to a college or university that is more selective than the postsecondary alternative they actually choose. Using a nationally representative dataset, we find that 41 percent of students…

This paper relaxes the assumption of homogeneous rates of return to schooling by employing nonparametric kernel regression. This approach allows us to examine the differences in rates of return to education both across and within groups. Similar to previous studies we find that on average blacks have higher returns to education than whites,…

In this paper we analyze the role played by self-confidence, modeled as beliefs about one's ability, in shaping task choices. We propose a model in which fully rational agents exploit all the available information to update their beliefs using Bayes' rule, eventually learning their true type. We show that when the learning process does not…

In this paper, we examine the college major choice decision in a risk and return framework using university entrance exam data from Turkey. Specifically we focus on the choice between majors with low income risk such as education and health and others with riskier income streams. We use a unique dataset that allows us to control for the choice set…

While there is an extensive literature on intergenerational transmission of economic outcomes (education, health and income for example), many of the pathways through which these outcomes are transmitted are not as well understood. We address this deficit by analysing the relationship between socio-economic status and child outcomes in university,…

This paper measures and decomposes socioeconomic-related inequality in mathematics achievement in 15 European Union member states. Data is taken from the 2003 wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). There is socioeconomic-related inequality in mathematics achievement, favoring the higher socioeconomic groups in each…

This paper analyzes the effects of parenting practices on children's education. Our empirical analyses are based on household data from Taiwan. More specifically, we investigate the influence of parents' child-rearing practices (i.e., encouragement and punishment) on their children's education attainments and aspirations. We also explore the…

A unique data set on Taiwan was employed to investigate the socioeconomic family backgrounds of students attending universities. Our empirical study found that individuals attending university are more likely to come from better-educated families than are those who do not attend university. Students attending public universities, which receive…

We use a rich administrative dataset from North Carolina to explore questions related to the relationship between teacher characteristics and credentials on the one hand and student achievement on the other. Though the basic questions underlying this research are not new--and, indeed, have been explored in many papers over the years within the…