This paper examines whether biased income expectations due to overconfidence lead to higher levels of debt-taking. In a lab experiment, participants can purchase goods by borrowing against their future income. We exogenously manipulate income expectations by letting income depend on relative performance in hard and easy quiz tasks. We successfully generate biased income expectations and show that participants ...
We present evidence that the practice of holding back poorly performing students affects estimates of the impact of class size on student outcomes based on within-school variation of cohort size over time. This type of variation is commonly used to identify class size effects. We build a theoretical model in which cohort size is subject to random shocks and students whose performance falls below a ...
Although universal childcare has become an essential tool to support child development, few economic studies analyze its effects on non-cognitive skills and little is known about causal effects on these skills in the long run. In this paper we go beyond short run analyses and examine the long run effects of one additional year of universal childcare on students’ personality traits in adolescence. We ...
We examine the consequences of compressing secondary schooling on university enrollment. An unusual education reform in Germany reduced the length of academic high school while simultaneously increasing the instruction hours in the remaining years. Accordingly, students receive the same amount of schooling but over a shorter period of time. Based on a difference-in-differences approach and using administrative ...
We focus on early childhood education and care (ECEC) as one important channel of social integration for refugee families that recently arrived in Germany (between 2013 and 2016). First, we examine the attendance of ECEC of refugee children and investigate how patterns vary depending on individual and family characteristics, and institutional determinants of the location of residence. Then, we...
We present evidence that the practice of holding back poorly performing students affects estimates of the impact of class size on student outcomes based on within-school variation of cohort size over time. This type of variation is commonly used to identify class size effects. We build a theoretical model in which cohort size is subject to random shocks and students whose performance falls...
In parts of Germany this summer, temperatures were extremely high and there was no rain to speak of: this is an example of an extreme weather event. Many people experienced physical discomfort and the livelihoods of some were threatened. Think of crop damage due to drought. Every unusually hot summer is not the consequence of climate change, nor are all hurricanes and all floods. Earlier decades also ...
