Deni Mazrekaj

• Ph.D. in Economics
• Assistant Professor of Sociology at Utrecht University

This article compares the labour market outcomes of high school dropouts to high school graduates who did not enrol into higher education, but immediately entered the labour market. Using parental educational background as an instrument on a rich administrative dataset in the Flemish Region of Belgium, we find no returns to a high school diploma on...

Elite schools in Hungary cherry pick high achieving students from general primary schools. The geographical coverage of elite schools has remained unchanged since 1999, when the establishment of new elite schools stopped. We exploit this geographical variation and estimate the impact of high achieving peers leaving the class on student achievement,...

In efficiency studies, inputs and outputs are often noisy measures, especially when education data is used. This article complements the conditional efficiency model by correcting for bias within conditional draws, using the m out of n bootstrap procedure. With a unique panel dataset, we estimate managerial efficiency, which accounts for nondiscret...

Modular education refers to the division of conventional courses into smaller components or modules. Each module enables students to obtain a partial certificate that can be combined into a qualification. This article evaluates whether modular education, which is widely used in secondary and tertiary education, has been effective in reducing school...

Merchants often use personalized pricing: they charge different consumers different prices for the same product. We assess the ethicality of personalized pricing by generalizing and extending an earlier model by Coker and Izaret (Journal of Business Ethics 173:387–398, 2021) who found that price personalization ethically outperforms unitary pricing...

Despite their potential vulnerability and untapped work potential, research on the group of women without a paid job and social benefits is limited. This study is the first to identify profiles among women in this group based on their intersecting economic, sociodemographic and contextual characteristics. A cluster analysis conducted on Dutch popul...

By conducting two waves of large-scale surveys in the United Kingdom and Germany, we investigate the determinants of identity and inequality misperceptions. We first show that people substantially overestimate the share of immigrants, Muslims, people under the poverty line, and the income share of the richest. Moreover, women, lower-income, and low...

Partnered men and women show consistently gendered patterns of labor market behavior. We test whether not only a person’s own gender, but also their partner’s gender shapes hours worked. We use Dutch administrative population data on almost 5,000 persons who had both male and female partners, whose hours worked we observe monthly over 15 years. We...

Understanding social inequalities in parental health is crucial for family functioning and child development. Theoretically, the double burden of parenting and minority stress may lead to the negative association between parenthood and health outcomes being stronger for people in same-sex relationships. Moreover, drawn from the social control proce...

This article introduces machine learning techniques to identify politically connected firms. By assembling information from publicly available sources and the Orbis company database, we constructed a novel firm population dataset from Czechia in which various forms of political connections can be determined. The data about firms' connections are un...

This article reviews the literature between 2015 and 2022 on mental health disparities between children with gender and sexual minority parents and children with different-sex parents. Although most studies indicate that children with gender and sexual minority parents do not experience more mental health problems than children with different-sex p...

By conducting two waves of large-scale surveys in the United Kingdom and Germany, we investigate the determinants of identity and inequality misperceptions of minorities and income distribution mostly associated with populist right and left voters. We first show that people substantially overestimate the share of immigrants, Muslims, people under t...

To curb the spread of the coronavirus, almost all countries implemented nationwide school closures. Suddenly, students experienced a serious disruption to their school and social lives. In this article, we argue that psychological research offers crucial insights for guiding policy about school closures during crises. To this end, we review the exi...

How does exposure to Islamist terrorism change perceptions of the share of Muslims and immigrants? We conduct a large-scale survey that measures misperceptions towards minority groups in four European countries. Our results show that terror attacks in the past increased misperceptions of the share of Muslims and immigrants. We also contend that thi...

By conducting large-scale surveys in Germany and the United Kingdom, we investigate the individual-level determinants of the ability to detect fake news and the inclination to share it. We distinguish between deliberate and accidental sharing of fake news. We document that accidental sharing is much more common than deliberate sharing. Furthermore,...

We propose using Stochastic Frontier Analysis to estimate pupils' academic underachievement. We model underachievement as the gap between expected achievement and actual achievement, not due to a learning disability. Our data are a panel for 2,228 Belgian pupils observed over 6 years of primary education. We found that the average underachievement...

Same-sex parents face substantial stressors due to their sexual orientation, such as experiences of prejudice and prohibitive legal environments. This added stress is likely to lead to reduced physical and mental health in same-sex parents that, in turn, may translate into problematic behavioral outcomes in their children. To date, there are only a...

The correct affiliation is “Leuven Economics of Education Research (LEER), KU Leuven, Naamsestraat 69, 3000 Leuven, Belgium”

This paper evaluates the inefficiency of adult education programs. Using an advanced four-component stochastic frontier model on Belgian adult education data, we distinguish between persistent and transient inefficiency of adult education programs. Whereas persistent inefficiency is structural and difficult to tackle because of its time-invariant n...

By conducting large-scale surveys in four European countries, we investigate the determinants of right-and left-wing misperceptions as well as fake news exposure and sharing. We also shed light on how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced both misperceptions and fake news. Our results indicate that people substantially overestimate the share of immigran...

Ondernemerschapsopleidingen bieden de mogelijkheid voor (jong)volwassenen om hun menselijk kapitaal uit te bouwen. In 2017 had 21% van de volwassenbevolking in de OESO landen tussen 25 en 64 jaar geen diploma van het secundair onderwijs (OESO, 2017). In België ligt dit aandeel nog hoger op 23%. Het belang van aanvullende opleidingen zal dan ook een...

Many economic regularities have been found to adhere to power laws. In this paper, we apply Benford’s law to consumer price index data from Norway and Zipf’s law on a Norwegian report about the history of Norwegian national accounts. Norway is a particularly interesting country to study as it scores among the highest-ranked countries on data qualit...

Deze studie vergelijkt de schooluitkomsten in het basis-en secundair onderwijs van kinderen met homoseksuele ouders met de schooluitkomsten van kinderen met heteroseksuele ouders. Eerder onderzoek naar schoolresultaten van kinderen met homoseksuele ouders is gebaseerd op kleine steekproeven. Het kon niet bepalen of kinderen zijn opgegroeid met homo...

Although widely used in policy debates, the literature on children’s outcomes when raised by same-sex parents mostly relies on small selective samples or samples based on cross-sectional survey data. This has led to a lack of statistical power and the inability to distinguish children born to same-sex parents from children of separated parents. We...

This chapter looks into the current SDG monitoring and reporting process at EU level, discusses its weaknesses and makes action-orientated recommendations to transform it into an inclusive, participatory, and transparent process that works for all. We argue that the EU’s current SDG monitoring and reporting process is not yet fit for purpose, and t...

Deze studie beschrijft het economisch effect van ondernemerschapsopleidingen van SYNTRA. Voor een individu meten we het effect van een opleiding als de arbeidsmarkteffecten die een cursist geniet na het volgen van een SYNTRA-opleiding. We kunnen een SYNTRA-opleiding immers beschouwen als een extra scholing, die resulteert in de opbouw van menselijk...

This doctoral dissertation employs quasi-experimental empirical methods on administrative population data to investigate the causal relationship between high school dropout and its selected predictors, labour market consequences, and policies. Within this broad research agenda, contributions are made in four specific research topics. I first use co...

De onderzoeksvraag van dit rapport luidt: "Welke kwalitatieve en kwantitatieve factoren en processen hebben een invloed op de efficiëntie van de opleidingen georganiseerd door de SYNTRA vzw’s?"

Deze studie beschrijft het economisch effect van ondernemerschapsopleidingen van SYNTRA. Voor een individu bestaat het effect van een opleiding uit arbeidsmarkteffecten die een cursist geniet na het volgen van een SYNTRAopleiding. We kunnen een SYNTRA-opleiding zo beschouwen als een extra scholing, die resulteert in de opbouw van menselijk kapitaal...

Elite schools in Hungary cherry pick high achieving students from general primary schools. The geographical coverage of elite schools has remained unchanged since 1999, when the establishment of new elite schools stopped.We exploit this geographical variation in the immobile Hungarian society and estimate the impact of high achieving peers leaving...

Het aandeel vroegtijdige schoolverlaters in Vlaanderen bedraagt 11,0% in 2015 Ondanks de dalende trend verlaten nog steeds meer dan een op de tien Vlaamse leerlingen het secundair onderwijs zonder voldoende kwalificaties. Hoe problematisch is dit? Een reeks onderzoeken tonen aan dat vroegtijdig schoolverlaten een duidelijke impact kan hebben op de...

Studie in opdracht van perspective.brussels voor een onderzoek naar schoolverzuim in het Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest.

Dit hoofdstuk wil de vsv-problematiek duidelijk toelichten en een aantal wetenschappelijk bewezen (buitenlandse) best-practice maatregelen weergeven. Het hoofdstuk is als volgt gestructureerd. Eerst worden de gevolgen van vsv opgesomd om duidelijk te maken dat schooluitval effectief een urgent probleem is. Vervolgens worden de beschikbare gegevens...

Via het Beleidsdomein Werk wordt een breed gamma van opleidingen aangeboden aan werkzoekenden, werknemers en ondernemers. De aanbieders zijn in dit geval VDAB en SYNTRA Vlaanderen. De overheid heeft er belang bij om inzicht te hebben in de effectiviteit en efficiëntie van de opleidingen, om te kunnen beslissen over het al dan niet verder gaan met h...

Via het beleidsdomein Werk wordt een breed gamma van opleidingen aangeboden aan werkzoekenden, werknemers en ondernemers. De aanbieders zijn in dit geval VDAB en SYNTRA Vlaanderen. Het Vlaams regeerakkoord benadrukt het belang van competentieontwikkeling voor (toekomstige) werknemers. Competentieontwikkeling moet er ten eerste voor zorgen dat mense...

Jongeren die zonder diploma middelbaar onderwijs de schoolbanken verlaten, ondervinden gemiddeld genomen meer moeilijkheden doorheen hun leven dan jongeren met een middelbaar diploma. Toch is deze eerste groep van vroegtijdig schoolverlaters (vsv’ers) nog steeds omvangrijk. In 2015 bedroeg het percentage jongeren tot 24 jaar die geen diploma secund...