|
on Education |
| By: | Philip Oreopoulos; Nina Low |
| Abstract: | Generative AI has been promoted as the technology that could transform education by providing every student a personal tutor. We provide some of the first large-scale experimental evidence, from a two-year cluster randomized trial in 18 Tennessee middle schools in which randomly assigned students used Khan Academy with its AI tutor, Khanmigo, configured to coach rather than give answers, during existing daily remedial mathematics sessions. Assignment raises math achievement by 1.3 national percentile ranks per term, or about 0.06 to 0.08 standard deviations over a school year; the implied effect of a full year of active participation reaches 0.14 standard deviations. These gains resemble those from Khan Academy practice without AI assistance. One explanation is that students used the tutor infrequently and, when they did, rarely engaged it in substantive mathematical dialogue: 96 percent of students tried Khanmigo at least once, but the median student messaged it on only a third of the days they practiced, and in only 17 percent of the exercise sessions in which they made a mistake. Messages that students did send were mostly bare answers or clicks on suggested prompts. The binding constraint appears to be engagement: realizing the promise of AI tutoring will require getting students to use it, not just giving them access. |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J24 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35620 |
| By: | Robbie Maris (UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities); Jake Anders (UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities); Tammy Campbell (Education Policy Institute); Gill Wyness (UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities) |
| Abstract: | Policies that require low-attaining students to continue investing in foundational skills may generate future human-capital benefits but also impose short-run psychological costs. We study this trade-off using England's compulsory GCSE English and mathematics resit requirement. Using longitudinal survey data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), we estimate the effect of exposure to England's compulsory resit requirement on adolescent wellbeing, controlling for cognitive ability, prior wellbeing and a rich set of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. We conduct a cross-country falsification test using Wales and Northern Ireland, where students also take GCSEs but face no comparable national resit requirement. We find that exposure to the requirement lowers wellbeing at age 17 by approximately 0.11 SDs. These effects are about exposure to retakes at the extensive margin - we find no evidence of an additional penalty for retaking in multiple subjects. Our average estimates conceal substantial heterogeneity: English resitting is associated with lower wellbeing among boys, while mathematics resitting is associated with lower wellbeing among girls. For boys resitting English, the negative estimates are concentrated among students further below the pass threshold, consistent with a discouragement mechanism; for girls resitting mathematics, they are concentrated among those who narrowly miss the threshold, consistent with a near-miss penalty. The results identify a potentially important non-pecuniary cost of compulsory remedial education and highlight a trade-off between policies designed to raise foundational skills and adolescent wellbeing. |
| Keywords: | resits, remedial education, human capital, mental health, education policy |
| JEL: | I21 I28 I12 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucl:cepeow:26-08 |
| By: | Philip Oreopoulos; Michael Liut; Alp Sungu; Nina Low |
| Abstract: | Large language models (LLMs) can make tutoring more scalable, but only if students use them to reason through mistakes rather than avoid effort. We study this question in a randomized field experiment with more than 6, 000 middle-school students in Hamilton County Schools using NUMI, a research-based computer-assisted learning (CAL) platform. Students were randomized to AI versus CAL-only support, mastery versus non-mastery progression, and one of two math topics. One week later, they completed a delayed assessment covering practiced and unpracticed material. AI students progressed more slowly and attempted fewer questions, but answered more accurately conditional on reaching an attempt. The clearest mechanism appeared after mistakes: AI improved next-attempt correctness and reduced attempts needed to return to a correct answer, while increasing time spent on each question receiving structured support. Mastery increased three-correct-in-a-row attainment but did not by itself improve delayed learning. The most encouraging delayed-test evidence appears when AI is embedded in the mastery workflow, with marginally significant gains concentrated on practiced Exercise 1 material. The results suggest that LLM tutoring can add value over standard CAL, but its value depends on structure that turns mistakes into productive learning moments. |
| JEL: | C93 I21 I24 I28 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35621 |
| By: | Kari Vea Salvanes; Asgeir Skålholt |
| Abstract: | This paper examines whether general skills and universal access to higher education (HE) shape vocational students' school-to-work transitions during recessions. We study how increased unemployment affects post-completion outcomes across institutional regimes that differ in curricular emphasis on general skills and access to HE - allowing us to identify effects of general skills alone and combined with HE access. Relative to a setting with limited general skills and no universal HE access, combining general skills with universal HE access more than halves labour-market scarring on earnings over the first six years after completion. General skills alone do not meaningfully affect labour-market scarring. |
| Keywords: | Dual vocational systems, general skills, access to higher education, business cycle fluctuations, scarring effects |
| JEL: | I28 I24 I21 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26219 |
| By: | Julia Bredtmann; Sebastian Otten; Christina Vonnahme |
| Abstract: | We analyze whether teachers discriminate against ethnic minority students with regard to grading. Using comprehensive data on students in German primary and secondary schools, we compare students' scores on standardized, anonymously graded achievement tests with non-anonymous teacher ratings within a difference-in-differences framework. Although minority students tend to score lower on the standardized test than majority students, this achievement gap is significantly reduced when graded by the teacher. This finding cannot be fully explained by differences in socioeconomic background, language-related differences in standardized test performance, or the sorting of students into educational contexts with different grading standards. Overall, our findings suggest that teachers have a positive evaluation bias toward ethnic minority students. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Discrimination, Grading bias |
| JEL: | F22 I24 J15 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26207 |
| By: | Andrés Barrios Fernández; Josefina Eluchans Errázuriz; Fernanda Ramírez-Espinoza |
| Abstract: | Large socioeconomic gaps in higher-education access and completion persist even among similarly talented students with access to generous funding, pointing to an important role for information frictions and unequal support. We evaluate whether a brief, scalable program combining a customized information package with four one-hour group counseling sessions delivered during the school day by external counselors can improve postsecondary trajectories when students face complex financial-aid and higher-education decisions. In a randomized controlled trial with 26, 853 students in 229 Chilean high schools, we assign schools to three groups: control, information only, and information plus group counseling. Linking administrative records and survey data, we find that information alone improves some dimensions of knowledge but does not significantly change funding applications or enrolment. By contrast, information plus counseling increases applications, enrolment, persistence, and short-degree completion. The counseling arm also generates larger gains in financial-aid knowledge and shifts students toward more reliable information sources, consistent with uncertainty reduction and procedural guidance as key mechanisms. Treatment effects are largest for students with less family support and weaker initial informational endowments, suggesting that counseling partly substitutes for missing support at home. The results indicate that in high-stakes, high-complexity settings, policy-relevant barriers extend beyond lack of information to difficulties in processing and acting on information. Structured counseling interventions of this kind can mitigate counselor scarcity and improve higher-education trajectories |
| Keywords: | school counselling, school counselling, higher education access, financial aid, access barriers |
| Date: | 2026–08–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2205 |
| By: | Mikkel Aagaard Houmark; Mathias Mørk |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with issues related to estimating the causal impact of teachers on student test scores. The central challenge is that students and teachers are matched non-randomly. To deal with this, we propose an extension of the standard teacher value-added model that is more robust to such endogenous mobility bias than conventional models. We then apply and extend recent innovations in bias correction of variance components to quantify the overall importance of teachers and estimate patterns of sorting and segregation. We find that teachers in Denmark are more important for student inequality than the conventional approaches would suggest. Further, we document a novel pattern of negative sorting that is driven by compensatory school investments through the within-school matching of high-value-added teachers to low-ability students. We also show that high-value-added teachers tend to be more experienced and educated and that they are particularly skilled at classroom management. Finally, we present suggestive evidence that these teachers also promote student non-cognitive skills and well-being. |
| Keywords: | teacher quality, value-added, academic achievement, test scores, sorting |
| JEL: | I20 I24 J24 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12895 |
| By: | Daniel Goller; Samuel Lüthi; Stefan C. Wolter |
| Abstract: | Practical skills are widely believed to be a key determinant of labor market success, yet credible empirical evidence remains scarce, because these skills are occupation-specific, acquired primarily through workplace experience, and notoriously difficult to measure. We address these challenges using an exceptional dataset covering over 170 occupations. Our measure of practical skills is based on high-stakes expert evaluations of apprentices' performance in occupation-specific standardized practical examinations, conducted under authentic workplace conditions and lasting from several hours to several weeks. Combined with rich administrative data, this allows us to separate practical skills from general and vocational knowledge. We show that practical skills form a distinct dimension of human capital, only weakly correlated with traditional achievement measures. Practical skills are the strongest predictor of early labor market success, consistently associated with higher first-year earnings, lower NEET risk, greater retention by the training firm, and a higher likelihood of entering ertiary education. These relationships are robust across occupational task groups and by gender. Out-of-sample analyses show that practical skills ubstantially improve predictions beyond conventional educational achievement and background characteristics. |
| Keywords: | return to skills, practical skills, school-to-work transition, human capital |
| JEL: | J24 I26 J31 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12881 |
| By: | Philipp Dierker; Dalton Conley |
| Abstract: | Parents’ and teachers’ expectations and aspirations are critical drivers of educational outcomes, yet what causally shapes these expectations remains unclear. In the present study, we address this question by deploying the random experiment of meiosis: namely, conditional on parental genotype, offspring genotype is random, allowing for the unconfounding of unique child characteristics from the more general family and household environment. Using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we employ Mendelian imputation to estimate the direct genetic effects of 18 polygenic indices on college encouragement, net of parental genetic background. The genetic propensity for educational attainment and mathematical ability predict stronger expectations of college attendance, while smoking behavior predicts weaker expectations. Psychiatric traits show no effects after multiple-testing correction, indicating that responses are concentrated on cognitive and behavioral traits. Mediation analysis finds that prospectively measured teachers’ encouragement accounts for roughly a quarter of the genetic effects on educational attainment for cognitive traits, but not for psychiatric traits. Genetic effects on expectations are amplified among high-SES parents and first-born children. Thus, genetic influences on educational expectations are narrow in trait scope and uneven across families, with encouragement serving as one channel linking genetic differences to educational inequality. |
| JEL: | I19 I24 J10 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35576 |
| By: | Paul Gregg; Yuyan Jiang; Lindsey Macmillan; Nikki Shure; Gill Wyness |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new evidence on intergenerational income persistence for a recent UK cohort. Using Next Steps, a longitudinal study of people born in England in 1989-90 linked to administrative education records, we estimate the association between parental income in adolescence and sons' earnings at age 32, compare the results with the 1970 British Cohort Study, and decompose persistence by early cognitive skills, noncognitive traits and educational attainment. Our preferred estimates show an intergenerational income elasticity of 0.214 and a rank-rank coefficient of 0.287. The rank-rank estimate is almost identical to the comparable estimate for the 1970 cohort, suggesting little change in relative income persistence across cohorts, although age-32 elasticities are likely to understate lifetime persistence. Education is the main observed mechanism: GCSE attainment, A-level attainment and degree completion account for a substantial share of persistence, while measured noncognitive traits explain little once education is included. The findings show that, despite educational expansion, family-income gradients in attainment remain central to the intergenerational transmission of economic advantage. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational income mobility, socioeconomic inequality, education, skills |
| Date: | 2026–08–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2206 |
| By: | Thomas F. Epper; Ernst Fehr; Kristoffer B. Hvidberg; Claus T. Kreiner; Søren Leth-Petersen; Basit Zafar; Claus Thustrup Kreiner |
| Abstract: | We examine whether individual preferences predict higher education choices. According to standard human capital theory, differences in individuals’ time and risk preferences lead to differences in educational investments. Testing this hypothesis is challenging, as it requires measuring individuals’ preferences, doing so before they make educational investments, and subsequently observing their educational choices. We combine incentivized, experimentally elicited measures of time and risk preferences for a large, representative sample of 18–19-year-old Danes with administrative data on subsequent higher education choices, program-specific earnings trajectories, prior school performance, and family background. In line with theory, we find that more patient individuals choose longer education programs and programs with steeper early-career earnings profiles, while more risk-averse individuals select programs with lower earnings dispersion and reduced downside risk. These relationships remain strong after controlling for cognitive ability, prior academic performance, and family background. Our findings suggest that preferences have a substantial impact on real-world educational investments and have implications for educational sorting. |
| Keywords: | risk preferences, time preferences, educational choices |
| JEL: | I23 I24 I26 C91 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12954 |
| By: | Caroline Namubiru; Jörg Baten; Alberto Batinti; Joan Costa-i-Font |
| Abstract: | Although compulsory education (CE) laws have widened access to schooling and shaped economic, social, and health outcomes, it remains unclear whether they reduce long-run health inequalities. We study the effect of CE policies on health inequality using height Gini indices for 66 countries between 1810 and 2000, estimating intent-to-treat effects through a staggered difference-in-differences design. Our results indicate that CE exposure reduces the height Gini. The inequality-reducing effect appears to operate mainly through increased years of schooling and reduced fertility. The effect is not uniform across regions, being largest in Europe, and it is driven largely by later extensions of CE duration rather than initial adoption alone. Overall, the findings indicate that education policy can meaningfully narrow health disparities over time, but its effectiveness depends on the scale of the mandate and the timing of adoption. |
| Keywords: | compulsory education, height, height inequality, health inequality, Gini index, economic development, human capital, education policy, anthropometric history, difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | I14 I15 I24 I25 I28 N30 O15 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12919 |
| By: | Karla Cordova; Jessamyn Schaller |
| Abstract: | We examine how contractions in local labor demand during the Great Recession affected children's academic achievement. We combine county-level test scores for grades 3–8 from the Stanford Education Data Archive with a shift-share design that interacts counties' 2005 industry composition with national industry employment growth, isolating demand-driven changes in local employment. Following recent advances in the shift-share literature, we validate the design with balance, pre-trend, and Rotemberg-weight diagnostics and report exposure-robust standard errors throughout. A one-standard-deviation adverse shock lowers mathematics achievement by about 0.03 student-level standard deviations and widens the White–Black and economic-disadvantage achievement gaps in both subjects. Within a common geography, losses concentrate among economically disadvantaged students. English language arts estimates point in the same direction but are harder to separate from the Great Recession's housing bust, and we interpret them as the combined effect of the labor-demand contraction and the associated decline in house prices. The achievement response is concentrated in the recession window. The post-2014 period, identified mainly by the oil-price cycle, yields a precise null, so our estimates measure the response to severe contractions rather than a general business-cycle parameter. School funding did not respond contemporaneously to these shocks, while family income, child poverty, and house prices all did. |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J13 J23 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35639 |
| By: | Anna Bindler; Barbara Boelmann; Lena Janys; Luisa H. Santiago Wolf |
| Abstract: | How do labor demand shocks affect workforce diversity in the absence of targeted diversity policies? A conceptual framework illustrates the potential trade-off between the demographic and quality composition of a workforce when there is a positive labor demand shock. Exploiting the German reunification as a natural experiment, we analyze the academic labor market where nearly all social sciences professors in East Germany were replaced while STEM faculty remained largely unchanged. Using administrative data and a regional difference-in-differences design, we find increased dispersion in the institutional quality of hires, indicating that the new hires came from less select departments. At the same time, female representation did not increase despite qualified women in the pipeline. Instead, East German hiring patterns converged to those in West Germany in terms of gender composition. In simulations, we investigate implied losses: Under conservative assumptions, we show that, considering the pipeline of qualified applicants, the marginal female hire's quality is approximately half a standard deviation higher than the marginal male hire's quality. |
| Keywords: | labor demand, diversity, higher education, universities |
| JEL: | I23 J23 J45 J70 J82 N34 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26174 |
| By: | Paul Bingley; Lorenzo Cappellari; Marco Ovidi; Matteo Sandi |
| Abstract: | We provide the first causal evidence on the intergenerational effects of parental criminal victimization originating outside the family. Using population-wide Danish administrative data, we compare end-of-compulsory-school examination scores of children exposed to parental victimization with those of matched controls, and exploit victimizations occurring after compulsory schooling to account for residual selection. Violent, but not property, victimization lowers children's mathematics scores by 0.03 standard deviations, rising to 0.05 standard deviations for exposure in early childhood, a period when parental inputs are especially consequential for skill formation. Deterioration in family stability, paternal behavior, and labor market attachment following victimization emerge as the primary mechanisms, pointing to an underappreciated channel of intergenerational inequality. |
| Keywords: | Parental criminal victimization, intergenerational spillovers, children's human capital, early childhood |
| JEL: | K42 I24 J13 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26210 |
| By: | Lorenzo Navarini; Dieter Verhaest |
| Abstract: | Returns to higher education vary substantially between and within fields of study. This paper studies whether occupational sorting at labor market entry contributes to this heterogeneity in early-career realized returns. We estimate a generalized sequential Roy model of yearly higher education enrollment choices, skill mismatch at entry, and subsequent labor market outcomes. Identification combines persistent latent heterogeneity with exclusion restrictions based on distance to programs and residual variation in graduation timing. Individuals with a higher probability of enrolling in higher education obtain higher returns, but also experience the largest losses in realized returns when they start in mismatched occupations. In counterfactual decompositions, entry mismatch accounts for a substantial share of low, and in some cases negative, early-career realized wage returns. |
| Keywords: | Returns to higher education; fields of study; skill mismatch; occupational sorting; heterogeneous returns. |
| JEL: | I23 I26 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26196 |
| By: | Georgy Artemov; Siqi Pan |
| Abstract: | We study, theoretically and experimentally, how transparency about students' priorities and admission chances shapes their incentives to acquire information about their own preferences in school choice and college admissions. In the model, uninformed students choose schools based on a common prior. When they learn their own preferences, their choices become more heterogeneous, which frees up seats at popular schools. Students who know they have high priority have stronger incentives to learn because they can more readily act on what they learn, whereas students who know they have low priority are discouraged. Full priority disclosure concentrates learning among high-priority students. By pooling priorities, partial disclosure spreads learning incentives to pooled students and yields higher welfare. In the laboratory, however, full disclosure yields the highest welfare instead, followed by partial disclosure, and then no disclosure, because greater transparency improves subjects' understanding of the strategic environment, leading to fewer mistakes. These findings support full disclosure of priorities or admission chances to guide information acquisition. However, deviations in learning remain even under greater priority transparency, partly because subjects respond suboptimally to admission chances when these are provided directly rather than inferred. Students' ability to interpret and use them is therefore itself a policy concern. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.20698 |
| By: | Zach Weingarten (University of Pennsylvania); Jere R. Behrman (University of Pennsylvania); Andrew Postlewaite (University of Pennsylvania) |
| Abstract: | Families frequently receive local signals about children’s skills, such as class rank in high school, yet the college market in which most students ultimately compete is much broader. Using nationally representative data, we show that student effort, parental investment, and beliefs about college degree attainment all respond predominantly to local ranks as opposed to global ranks, despite both strongly predicting college completion. We develop and estimate a dynamic model separating optimistic beliefs, information frictions, and peer interactions. Counterfactual-policy experiments show that more precise information, provided sufficiently early, raises skill accumulation and college completion. Eliminating optimism has the opposite effects on all outcomes.Length: 76 pages |
| Keywords: | Class Ranks, Information Frictions, Belief Distortions, Human-Capital Accumulation, Academic Competition |
| JEL: | J24 I20 D83 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–08–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:26-012 |
| By: | Asbjoern Juul Petersen (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen); Jacob Richard Strabo (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen) |
| Abstract: | We investigate how performance variability is associated with long run labor market outcomes. Using administrative data on complete grade distributions for all general high-school graduates from 2001 to 2006, we measure within-student grade variability as the standard deviation of final grades and relate it to long-run labour market income. Conditional on identical GPA and a long list of background controls, a one standard deviation increase in grade variability predicts a 4.8 percent lower income. The income differences are primarily driven by both extensive and intensive labor supply. Our results are robust in various specifications and even in a twin fixed effects analysis. In the second part of the paper, we further investigate potential mechanisms. We conjecture that performance stability is an underlying trait which impacts sorting behaviour into different higher education- and career tracks: Individuals with higher performance instability tend to sort into programmes and professions where instability is not punished or even rewarded but where the income trajectories are much more volatile. This differential sorting behaviour, especially into different fields and industries, can explain most of the income differences. |
| Keywords: | grade variance, performance stability, education, human capital, income |
| JEL: | I26 J24 J31 I21 C23 |
| Date: | 2026–08–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:kucebi:2615 |
| By: | Stern, Charlotta (The Ratio Institute); Allstrin, Susanna (The Ratio Institute) |
| Abstract: | Many high-income labour markets combine persistent skills shortages with the underemployment of foreign-born academics, whose qualifications and experience tend to yield a lower return after migration. Work-based internships are a common policy response, expected to help migrants rebuild context-specific human capital, improve host-country language, and access the informal networks through which much hiring occurs. Yet the evidence base is almost entirely supply-side: it examines what internships do for interns, while the organisations that must agree to host them remain largely unstudied. What makes a placement work from the employer's point of view is therefore poorly understood. Drawing on human capital theory, we address this gap through semi-structured interviews with managers and supervisors at 24 Swedish organisations that had hosted one or more foreign-born academic interns through the national programme Korta vägen ("the academic fast track"). Using inductive thematic analysis, we identify factors operating at three levels — individual, organisational, and institutional — that shape how well an intern's human capital can be put to use. Education quality is less salient to hosts than the literature would predict; language matters chiefly as a vehicle for social integration; cultural friction is workable when expectations are made explicit; and institutional rules around credentials and licensing constrain placement quality in regulated professions. Hosts also report substantial, sometimes unanticipated, organisational gains. We argue that demand-side evidence requires human capital theory to be broadened to incorporate language, culture, and social capital if it is to explain matching. |
| Keywords: | human capital; labour market integration; foreign-born academics; work-based internships; demand side; thematic analysis; Sweden |
| JEL: | J15 J24 J61 J62 M53 |
| Date: | 2026–08–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0392 |
| By: | Setiawan, Budi |
| Abstract: | The higher education sector is becoming increasingly competitive, requiring universities to implement effective promotion strategies to attract prospective students. This study analyzes the effectiveness of promotion strategies implemented by the studied private higher education institution through social media marketing, outdoor advertising, and event marketing, and identifies the main factors influencing students’ decisions to enroll. A quantitative descriptive approach was used with survey data collected from 207 respondents representing more than 93 schools. The results show that Instagram and TikTok are the most frequently used platforms among students, with usage rates of 87 percent and 82 percent. However, the conversion rate of social media video advertisements is relatively low, ranging from 21 percent to 29 percent. Outdoor advertising through billboards on Surya Kencana Street shows higher effectiveness with a conversion rate of 76 percent. Event marketing activities such as school presentations demonstrate moderate effectiveness, while programs such as institutional academic competition program, open stands, and the “institution Mengajar” show lower awareness levels. The main factors influencing students’ decisions include campus location, study program relevance, employment prospects, accreditation, and tuition fees. The study highlights the need for integrated promotional strategies combining digital engagement, offline visibility, and experiential marketing to improve recruitment effectiveness in private higher education institutions. |
| Date: | 2026–06–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:2hac4_v1 |
| By: | Diane E. Alexander; Molly Schnell |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how selection into medicine in the United States influences physician practice styles. We exploit macroeconomic conditions at the time of medical school application as an exogenous shock to the applicant pool and find that labor market downturns in other prestigious fields increase applications to medical school and shift the composition of matriculating cohorts toward students from non–pre-medical backgrounds. Strikingly, these low–outside-option cohorts practice medicine differently decades later. Conditional on experience, specialty, and outcome year, recession-cohort physicians bill Medicare more per beneficiary despite seeing healthier patients—particularly on discretionary, revenue-generating services—and sort into practice settings with higher-powered financial incentives. The additional spending does not produce detectable improvements in patient health. Taken together, our findings point to stronger financial motivation among those drawn into medicine when outside options are weak and suggest that medical school admissions screen imperfectly on the attributes that ultimately shape how physicians practice. |
| JEL: | E32 I11 I23 J24 J44 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35631 |
| By: | Christian Belzil; Jörgen Hansen |
| Abstract: | Using longitudinal data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS), designed by Statistics Canada in conjunction with the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we examine the ability of PISA test scores to predict subsequent educational and labor market success. Overall, our results indicate that performance on both components of the PISA assessment is much more predictive of success in the labor market than of academic success or the probability of obtaining a degree in a scientific field. Our findings suggest that the OECD is partially justified in claiming that the PISA program measures individuals' ability to solve practical, real-world problems rather than simply assessing knowledge acquired directly through school curricula. However, given the strong correlation between performance on the two components of the assessment and the virtual absence of any difference in their predictive power, we cannot rule out the possibility that the competencies measured by the PISA program are influenced by a common latent factor akin to general intelligence—one of the most common criticisms directed at the statistical design of the PISA assessment. À partir de données longitudinales de l’Enquête auprès des jeunes en transition (EJET) conçue par Statistique Canada de concert avec le Programme international pour le suivi des élèves (PISA) de l’OCDE, nous analysons la capacité du test PISA à prédire les succès scolaires et professionnels ultérieurs. De façon générale, nos résultats indiquent que les résultats obtenus dans les volets mathématique et lecture du test PISA sont beaucoup plus prédictifs du succès obtenu sur le marché du travail qu'ils ne le sont du succès académique ou de la probabilité d'obtenir un diplôme scientifique. Nos résultats indiquent que l’OCDE est partiellement justifiée de considérer que le projet PISA peut mesurer des capacités individuelles à résoudre des problèmes concrets et pratiques, et non simplement des connaissances découlant directement des programmes scolaires. Cependant, étant donné la forte corrélation entre les résultats obtenus dans les deux volets, ainsi que la quasi-absence de différence entre leurs capacités prédictives, on ne peut exclure que les compétences mesurées par le programme PISA soient contaminées par un facteur latent commun assimilable à l'intelligence générale (une des critiques les plus communes adressées à la conception statistique du programme PISA). |
| Keywords: | training, skills, formation, compétences |
| JEL: | I21 I24 |
| Date: | 2026–08–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirpro:2026rp-19 |
| By: | Seim, Katja; Vitorino, Maria Ana |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically investigates the add-on or “drip" pricing behavior of firms. We present a model in which consumers purchase a base product and, with some probability, an add-on product from the same firm, but are not necessarily attentive to their possible need for the add-on product. We show that a loss leader pricing strategy emerges whereby firms price the base product below, and the add-on above, standalone pricing levels. We test the implications of the model in the Portuguese market for driving instruction where students frequently pay for repeat driving tests and additional lessons upon failing their initial test. Relying on a detailed, nationwide data set on student characteristics and preferences, school attributes including fees and costs, and market demographics for a cross-section of local markets with differing numbers of school competitors, we find evidence in support of the model predictions. Most notably, prices for the base course of instruction, but not the add-on repeat courses, decline in the number of competitors a firm faces. We complement these results with survey evidence on possible sources of consumer naivete that the observational data do not speak to. The survey suggests that at least one quarter of students are inattentive to repeat fees when making their school choice, driven both by an underestimation of fail propensities and an unawareness of the price of a repeat test. |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19258 |