Class Size and Class Heterogeneity We study how class size and composition affect the academic and labor market performances of college students, two crucial policy questions given the secular increase in college enrollment. We rely on the random assignment of students to teaching classes. Our results suggest that a one standard deviation increase in the class-size would result in a 0.1 standar...

Job Search as a Determinant of Graduate Over-Education: Evidence from Australia This study considers the relationship between job search and over-education amongst recent Australian bachelor degree graduates. Using a panel estimation method, we find that using universities’ career offices is associated with a reduced probability of over-education (between 3% and 8%) vis-à-vis responding to a jo...

In many educational settings, students may have an incentive to take courses where high grades are easier to achieve, potentially corroding student learning, evaluation of student achievement, and the fairness and efficiency of post-graduation labor outcomes. A grading system that takes into account heterogeneity of teacher standards and student ability could mitigate these problems. Using uniq...

We study the location-specific component in research productivity of economics and finance faculty who have ever been affiliated with the top 25 universities in the last three decades. We find that there was a positive effect of being affiliated with an elite university in the 1970s; this effect weakened in the 1980s and disappeared in the 1990s. We decompose this university fixed effect and fi...

This paper estimates the effect of receiving a need-based grant on the performance of university students in Italy. We perform both cross-sectional (between-universities) and within-universities propensity score matching analyses in order to evaluate the effect of grants on several students’ performance indicators as first year credits, dropout, and study efficiency. The findings suggest that f...

There exists a long-standing debate in higher education on which academic calendar is optimal. Using panel data the near universe of four-year nonprofit institutions and leveraging quasi-experimental variation calendars across years, we show that switching from quarters to semesters negatively impacts on-time graduation rates. Event study analyses negative effects persist beyond transition. tra...

School education in Germany is under the responsibility of the federal states and as a consequence average grades differ widely across regions. Since school leavers apply nationwide for admission to university, regional provenance may thus matter a lot for the success probability in the admission process. Using a comprehensive dataset of the German central clearing house for university admissio...

State Merit-based Financial Aid Programs and College Attainment We examine the effects of recently adopted state merit-based financial aid programs on college attendance and degree completion. Our primary analysis uses microdata from the 2000 Census and 2001-2010 American Community Survey to estimate the effects of merit programs on educational outcomes for 25 merit aid adopting states. We also...

Time-to-Degree and the Business Cycle When students themselves enjoy large degrees of freedom in determining the duration of their studies, it results in a fairly large degree of interindividual variance in terms of time-todegree. This paper investigates individual time-to-degree in a model where students determine the optimum time-to-degree whilst weighing up the cost against the consumption b...

This paper evaluates the role of rising income inequality in explaining observed growth college tuition. We develop a competitive model market, which quality depends on instructional expenditure and average ability admitted students. An innovative feature our is that it allows for continuous distribution quality. find increases US can explain more than half rise net tuition since 1990 has also ...