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on Education |
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Issue of 2026–06–22
nine papers chosen by João Carlos Correia Leitão, Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Barbara Biasi; Song Ma |
| Abstract: | We study whether exposure to frontier knowledge in college affects student outcomes. Combining 459, 415 syllabi from seven Texas public universities with 107 million publications and linked student records, we measure each course’s proximity to recent versus older research in its field. Exploiting syllabus updates unobserved at enrollment, we find that frontier exposure increases completion, GPA, graduate-school attendance, and earnings, and reduces time-to-degree. Completion, GPA, and progression gains are broad, while graduate-school and earnings returns are larger for students with stronger preparation and family resources. The evidence suggests two mechanisms: frontier content keeps students engaged, and sustained exposure builds labor-market skills. |
| JEL: | I23 I24 I26 J24 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35269 |
| By: | Zvaigzne, Arkadijs |
| Abstract: | Financial aid programs in higher education vary widely in design, including how aid is structured and the timing of provision. This paper studies the impact of financial aid provided as a repeated tournament and its dynamic treatment effects. Pooling administrative data that captures 32% of all tertiary students in a single European country, I exploit a relative GPA-based eligibility rule in a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal impacts of two types of aid: tuition waivers and stipends. Both forms of aid yield large returns; waiver (stipend) eligibility increases graduation rates by 12.4 (6.6) percentage points, and increases student next-semester GPA by 0.38 (0.21) standard deviations. I find a powerful crowding-in effect, where receiving aid in one semester significantly increases the probability of receiving it in the future, driving a substantial portion of the total long-term benefit. Exploring tournament heterogeneity reveals a distinct life-cycle of aid: early-semester awards appear to be most effective, with the effectiveness diminishing in later semesters. Finally, I show that while short-term tournament incentives exhibit dynamic complementarity by maximizing the effort of high-achieving students, the long-term impact on degree attainment is deeply compensatory for lower-achieving students. These findings reveal a dual-margin response: while competitive aid incentivizes academic effort from top performers, its long-term impact operates by retaining and graduating marginal students. |
| Keywords: | Student Financial Aid, Higher Education |
| JEL: | H40 H52 I21 I22 I23 I28 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:129153 |
| By: | Rosenzweig, Mark (Yale University); Xu, Bing (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates how rank-based reward systems in schools shape student effort and peer learning. In competitive environments, classmates serve both as rivals for rewards and as sources of academic support. Using nationally representative U.S. high school panel data and refugee student placement records, the paper examines how changes in ability composition affect student behavior under different competition policies. A theoretical tournament model predicts that introducing higher-ability peers reduces incumbent students’ effort and willingness to assist classmates, especially where academic recognition depends on relative ranking, while lower-ability peers generate the opposite effects. Empirical results support these predictions: high-performing students in competitive schools spend less time on homework and lose positive peer-learning benefits when stronger peers enter cohorts. |
| Keywords: | students, effort, ranks, schools, competition |
| JEL: | I21 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18676 |
| By: | Guilherme Lichand; Luca Moreno-Louzada; Thiago da Costa; Matthew Gentzkow |
| Abstract: | Concerns about negative impacts of student phone use have led to calls around the world for tighter restrictions on phones in schools. This paper evaluates the impact of a 2023 policy that banned non-pedagogical uses of phones within schools in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To isolate the causal effects of the policy, we contrast middle schools that already had strict rules on phone use prior to the policy ("control schools'') to similar schools that did not have strict rules ("treatment schools''), before and after the ban. While restrictions were imperfectly implemented both before and after the ban, we show that in-school phone use fell substantially in treatment schools relative to control. We then show that test scores, which were trending similarly in the two groups prior to the ban, improved by 0.06 s.d. in treatment schools relative to control. |
| JEL: | I28 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35233 |
| By: | Abid N. Alam; Philip Oreopoulos; Uros Petronijevic |
| Abstract: | Using four large-scale experiments across two major Canadian universities, we experimentally evaluate the effects of growth mindset and social belonging interventions on student outcomes. In a sample of nearly 12, 000 students, we find no immediate or dynamic effects on student grades and no effect on persistence through university. We further combine survey and administrative data with machine learning methods to explore treatment effect heterogeneity, finding no evidence of meaningful variation in treatment effects across student subgroups. Despite the recent promise of these light-touch interventions, our findings indicate further research is required to identify the contexts in which their benefits generalize. |
| JEL: | C93 I21 I23 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35230 |
| By: | Yoshdia, Ken |
| Abstract: | Students' engagement with a course is often measured through grades and attendance, yet much of what happens in a classroom is voluntary. This article studies one visible feature of teaching practice--instructor attire--and asks whether it changes that voluntary margin. The evidence comes from six first-year ``Information (Data Science)'' sections at Chiba University of Commerce. The same instructor taught all sections, using a common syllabus, schedule, and grading scheme; three sections were randomly assigned to formal attire and three to casual attire. The course is not an economics course, but the design speaks to a question familiar in economics education: whether observable teaching practices affect forms of student engagement that standard outcome measures miss. Formal attire is not associated with higher attendance or final exam scores. The participation margin looks different. Students in formal-attire sections submitted fewer ungraded reaction papers and wrote fewer words per submitted reaction paper. Exact randomization inference and wild-cluster bootstrap checks point in the same direction, while also showing how much uncertainty remains with only six randomized sections. A supplementary sentiment measure, coded from the original Japanese reactions, is too imprecise to support a separate conclusion. The main lesson is therefore about measurement as much as attire: voluntary-effort outcomes can reveal classroom responses that are not visible in grades or attendance alone. |
| Keywords: | instructor attire; voluntary participation; economics education; higher education; field experiment. |
| JEL: | C93 D91 I21 I23 |
| Date: | 2026–03–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:129095 |
| By: | José Pedro Pontes |
| Abstract: | This paper seeks to provide a reasonable explanation for why private colleges display a much higher elasticity of schooling rates with respect to population density than public universities. It also accounts for the fact that, although private universities played an important role in the early stages of the expansion of higher education in Portugal, their relative weight declined considerably in more recent times. While the higher level of subsidisation of fixed costs in public universities is undoubtedly an important factor behind this pattern, but it is far from the only one. Public universities also tend to internalise spatial knowledge externalities, a behaviour that private institutions do not typically replicate. Consequently, schooling rates in private universities are consistently lower than those in public institutions and this gap narrows as regional accessibility and demographic density increase. Moreover, the evolution of higher education exhibits rising spatial inequalities at earlier stages and diminishing inequalities at later stages. |
| Keywords: | Higher Education Growth, Population Density, Spatial Inequalities in Schooling, Knowledge Spillovers, Public and Private Universities. |
| JEL: | I20 O15 O18 R11 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp04182026 |
| By: | Pineda-Hernández, Kevin; Rycx, François; Senterre, Thomas; Volral, Mélanie |
| Abstract: | Although a growing number of studies highlight the moderating role of educational attainment on the wage differential between immigrants and natives, the influence of the field of study remains largely unexplored. We aim to fill this gap by drawing on detailed, matched employer-employee data on workers holding a master's degree in Belgium for the period 1999-2016. After controlling for a wide range of covariates, our regression analyses show that the wage gap between immigrant and native workers with degrees in higher-paying fields (i.e. STEM and LEM) narrows considerably over two generations, but remains significant. By contrast, among workers with degrees in lower-paying fields (i.e. Other Social Sciences, Education, Services, Arts and Humanities) the wage gap between immigrants and natives disappears within two generations. Furthermore, our wage decompositions reveal that immigrant graduates are somewhat more likely to hold degrees in higher-paying fields than natives, which results in a small positive quantity effect. However, they also show that wage returns associated with fields of study are significantly lower for immigrants than for natives. This leads to a negative price effect, which, in percentage points, is halved over two generations. Altogether, the combined price and quantity effects - with the former far outweighing the latter - account for between 28 and 37% of the overall pay gap between natives and first- and second-generation immigrants, respectively. Sensitivity tests using a more detailed classification of fields of study further refine our results. |
| Keywords: | Immigrant-native wage gap, first- and second-generation immigrants, field of study, matched employer-employee data |
| JEL: | I23 I24 I25 I26 J31 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1776 |
| By: | Joshua S. Graff Zivin; Seunghoon Lee |
| Abstract: | Formal childcare and public schooling are widely understood to be central to mothers’ labor market attachment. Yet, a large literature finds that even substantial expansions of formal childcare produce modest or null effects on maternal employment. We study the role of stochastic caregiving demand shocks that cause childcare constraints to bind intermittently even when formal care is available. Using plausibly exogenous variation in wildfire smoke exposure, we show that smoke increases school closures and student absenteeism, generating caregiving demand. Further, by comparing mothers whose youngest child varies in reliance on school-based childcare, we find that these shocks impose substantial contemporaneous costs and, when accumulated, reduce employment. Employment losses are fully offset among mothers working outside male-dominated industries, consistent with workplace tolerance moderating the consequences of intermittent caregiving demands. |
| JEL: | J13 J22 Q54 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35264 |