Andrea Maria Weber’s research while affiliated with Technical University of Darmstadt and other places

We estimate the effect of age of school entry on educational outcomes using two different data sets for Germany, sampling pupils at the end of primary school and in the middle of secondary school. Results are obtained based on instrumental variable estimation exploiting the exogenous variation in month of birth. We find robust and significant positive effects on educational outcomes for pupils who enter school at 7 instead of 6 years of age: test scores at the end of primary school increase by about 0.40 standard deviations and the probability to attend the highest secondary schooling track (Gymnasium) increases by about 12% points. KeywordsEducation-Immigration-Policy-Identification

Discussions on the benefits of single-gender education on girls science outcomes are popular in the German education literature. However, most empirical evidence tends to be qualitative work and the causal effects of single-gender education are hardly identified using appropriate statistical methods. This paper provides insights from a recent single-gender-education school project conducted in computer science classes at a German lower secondary school. About 80 students participated in this intervention study repeatedly answering specifically designed questionnaires and tests. The project fails to identify positive effects from single-gender education but the interpretation is impeded by several confounding factors. When directly asked, most students prefer to be educated in mixed-gender groups, while the participating teachers judge their teaching experience with the project groups in favour of single-gender education.

In Germany, the streaming of students into an academic or nonacademic track at age 10 can be revised at later stages of secondary education. To investigate the importance of such revisions, we use administrative data on the student population in the German state of Hessen to measure the persistence of school entry age’s impact on choice of secondary school track. Based on exogenous variation in the school entry age by birth month, we obtain regression discontinuity estimates for different cohorts and grades up to the end of secondary education. We show that the effect of original school entry age on a student’s later attending grammar school disappears exactly at the grade level in which educational institutions facilitate track modification.

In this paper we show that, when endogenous fertility is considered via Cobb-Douglas preferences, public debt plays a clear-cut role on dynamic inefficiency (DI) of an OLG economy: in fact, for correcting the DI problem, debt must be increased (decreased) when the economy is overaccumulating (underaccumulating). The occurrence of overaccumulation, and, thus, the necessity of a positive level of debt, is favoured by a small capital income share, on the technological side, and a sufficiently high degree of patience and a low preference for children on preferences grounds. As for the optimal level of debt, our analysis shows that a high level ofdebt is more likely to be optimal for countries with a relatively low share of capital, with high costs for rearing children, with high individuals' degree of patience; as for individuals preference for children, as expected, the preference for a numerous family reduces the risk of overaccumulation and, thus, the optimal level of national debt. Moreover, interestingly, although in our model the occurrence of dynamic inefficiency (DI) does not depend on the level of the child rearing cost, such cost magnifies the degree of inefficiency and, therefore, a higher public debt is required for correcting DI. Finally, it is argued that such findings can provide useful criteria for assessing the optimality of public debt-cutting policies undertaken by several Europen countries.

In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir die Auswirkung des Einschulungsalters auf den sp�teren schulischen Erfolg. Grundlage der empirischen Analysen sind zwei unterschiedliche Datens�tze f�r Deutschland, die Individualdaten von Sch�lern am Ende der Grundschule und in der weiterf�hrenden Schule enthalten. Das methodische Vorgehen st�tzt sich auf Instrumentalvariablensch�tzungen, die die exogene Variation des Geburtsmonats verwenden. Dieser Ansatz nutzt den Zusammenhang zwischen Geburtsmonat und Einschulungsalter, der auf Grund gesetzlicher Stichtagsregelungen besteht. Es zeigt sich, dass sich ein h�heres Einschulungsalter signifikant positiv auf den sp�teren schulischen Erfolg auswirkt: So liegen f�r Sch�ler, die mit sieben, anstatt mit sechs Jahren eingeschult werden, die Testergebnisse in der standardisierten Grundschul- Lese-Untersuchung IGLU um etwa 0.4 Standardabweichungen h�her als bei den relativ j�ngeren Sch�lern und die Wahrscheinlichkeit, ein Gymnasium zu besuchen, steigt f�r die �lter eingeschulten Kinder um etwa 12 Prozentpunkte.

We estimate the effect of age of school entry on educational attainment using three different data sets for Germany, sampling pupils at the end of primary school, in the middle of secondary school and several years after secondary school. Results are obtained based on instrumental variable estimation exploiting the exogenous variation in month of birth. We find robust and significant positive effects on educational attainment for pupils who enter school at seven instead of six years of age: Test scores at the end of primary school increase by about 0.42 standard deviations and years of secondary schooling increase by almost half a year.

This paper presents evidence on the development of educational attainment and its returns on the labor market in Germany in the time period 1985-2002. Returns to education are estimated using Mincer equations. We analyze microcensus data in addition to GSOEP data, which allows estimating returns to tertiary education separately by subject of degree for the first time for Germany in such detail. The data indicate an educational expansion, especially for women in West Germany, which is coherent with the relatively high returns to this group. One interesting finding is that each gender reaches the highest returns in those fields of study where its shares are relatively high. For women this is in the fields of studies to become teacher, while men lead in law, business and economics and engineering. Additionally, the returns are higher for most degree subjects in West than in East Germany, especially for women.

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge on the link between education and wage inequality in Germany. The wage inequality is characterized by its stability, although a more detailed analysis reveals structural differences, especially between East and West Germany. Both the between and within educational levels wage inequality changed little over time, while there are some tendencies of a converging distribution of education. A need for further research is identified in the effects of education on wage inequality in separate cohorts as well as the direct links between the two distributions in Germany.