We investigate how social identity, namely gender and caste, affects stream choice at the higher secondary level of schooling in India. The choice of science stream at this level is a crucial determinant of subsequent science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and labor market outcomes. Using nationally representative data…

The distance between the birth date and the school entry cutoff has been repeatedly used as an exogenous instrument to examine the impact of several educational programmes. In this work, we analyse the validity of this instrument for the case of Argentina. Considering multiple waves of the Permanent Household Survey we detect the existence of…

School choice can segregate schools by academic ability, income or ethnicity, but is this because of households' choices, or constraints in access to good schools? We examine whether segregation is by choice, finding that households' school choices are segregating in most areas. Through counterfactual simulation, we find that implementing a policy…

While it has been shown that university attendance is strongly predicted by parental education, we know very little about why some potential first-generation students make it to university and others do not. This paper looks at the role of non-cognitive skills in the university participation of this disadvantaged group in England. We find that…

Despite Korea's economic development, gender inequality in its society and the labour market is still prevalent. Within this context, this investigation considers the relationship between overeducation and life satisfaction by gender. Korean females are better educated than males, and they also face more discrimination in the labour market, the…

The empirical link between children's cognitive ability and parental risk attitudes has been understudied. Specifically, an individual's educational outcome may reflect the decisions made on their behalf by parents, reflecting their risk attitudes. This paper aims to fill gaps in the existing literature by investigating whether parental risk…

The switch to remote classes disrupted higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Online courses have the potential to be especially disruptive in health fields, where more of the learning is hands-on and practice-based. Using detailed pre-COVID administrative data from a large, diverse public university, I study how online course delivery can…

Despite the increasing number of students learning abroad, little is known about the way international students migrate and how policies influence their decision. This article evaluates one German state's recent policy to charge international students for tuition, while tertiary education remains free elsewhere. For my difference-in-differences…

A growing number of doctoral students work during their Ph.D., which is commonly associated with higher risks of dropout. This paper investigates whether the sector of employment (public or private) is also a predictor of student outcomes in Ph.D. programs. Using a dataset on doctorate students in Brazil, the association of employment with the…

Using a sample of college-educated Hispanics from the 2016-2017 American Community Survey we examine the role of potential social networks on the education-occupation mismatch for Hispanics in the U.S. To do this, we use a novel data-driven index to measure the degree of education-occupation mismatch, while potential networks are measured using…

This paper provides evidence on the effect of local prescription opioid use on academic achievement of 3rd-8th graders between 2009 and 2018. Using county fixed effects models, I find that when counties have higher levels of prescription opioid use, students score lower on standardized assessments two to three years later, with variation by…

We combine administrative data from a regional public university with a novel revealed-preference indicator of student friendships to show that socially connected first-year university students are more likely to be retained into their second year. The impact of friends on retention is statistically and economically significant: each friend raises…

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 study measures college quality by the amount by which the college adds to the salary of its students above what the median market value would be for the same majors and student quality. Commonly used national rankings of colleges such as U.S. News and World Report or Forbes are heavily biased by a college's average salaries and the quality of…

In most OECD countries, more women than men enrol in undergraduate degrees. I analyse this gap in enrolment using the elicited subjective beliefs of a sample of 240 17-18-year-olds living in England. I use these beliefs to estimate a discrete choice model. The results from this model can explain the majority of the gender gap in enrolment. Gender…