Topic Education

Reform Priorities for Germany – an OECD Perspective

As the Germany economy has slowed sharply and is facing increasing trade uncertainty, advancing the reform agenda is key to revive economic growth and address inequality. A long-standing public investment backlog is holding back the take-up of new technologies, productivity and private investment. While employment is strong, many workers earn low wages and women in particular often work reduced...

Better Together? Heterogeneous Effects of Tracking on Student Achievement

This study estimates mean and distributional effects of early between-school ability tracking on student achievement. For identification, I exploit heterogeneity in tracking regimes between German federal states. After comprehensive primary school, about 40% of students are selected for the academic track and taught in separate schools in all states. The remaining students, however, are either...

Which preferences cause horizontral sex segregation in fields of studies? Some experimental evidence

Occupational gender segregation is one of the most persistent gender inequalities in the labor market and one contributing factor is the lack of women in STEM fields. Possible explanations for this pattern are the characteristics of the fields of study (creative-associative versus analytical-systematic thinking style required, the number of mathematics courses, competitive atmosphere), and...

Collaborative Learning & Student Outcomes: Evidence from a Field Experiment

The Impact of Formal Child Care on Parenting Intensity

(together with C. Katharina Spieß and Sevrin Waights) We examine the impact of day care usage on parenting activities. We measure parenting activities as the amount of time that parents spend on child rearing and, in particular, on educational activities with children. Using time-use data and panel data of a household survey, we estimate the effects at the extensive (use vs. non-use)...

Information Provision and Postgraduate Studies

This is the first paper to experimentally examine effects of information provision on postgraduate education decisions. We conduct and evaluate an online-RCT across 446 college students close to completion of their undergraduate degree and provide information about pecuniary and non-pecuniary consequences of postgraduate studies. We find negative effects on intentions and postgraduate...

Mathias Huebener wins Award for Best Dissertation in Educational Economics

The Verein für Socialpolitik has awarded Mathias Huebener, a Post Doctoral Research Associate at the DIW Education and Family Department, with the prize for best dissertation in educational economics. His dissertation is titled "Essays on the impact of education and family policies on the formation of human capital". The prize is awarded every two years. 

Wage premia for skills: complementarity between cognitive and non-cognitive skills

Abstract:I present evidence on the association between individuals' cognitive abilities, personality traits, and earnings in Poland. I find that cognitive skills and certain personality traits are complements. In particular, I find that cognitive skills and emotional stability are complementary, with neurotic individuals having significantly lower returns to their cognitive skills....

Language Skills and Employment Rate of Refugees in Germany Improving with Time

by Herbert Brücker, Johannes Croisier, Yuliya Kosyakova, Hannes Kröger, Giuseppe Pietrantuono, Nina Rother and Jürgen Schupp Asylum seekers migrating to Germany remains a hotly debated topic. The second wave of a longitudinal survey of refugees shows that their integration has progressed significantly, even though some refugees came to Germany in poor health and with little formal education. ...

Inequalities in the Experience of Early Education in England: Access, Peer Groups and Transitions

This paper summarises the output of a Nuffield-funded research project exploring inequalities in three aspects of children’s experience in early education in England. The main focus of the project was on ‘peer effects’ in pre-school settings: we examine the extent of clustering by income and language background and explore associations between pre-school peer group and children’s outcomes in early ...