World Bank
Enhancing Teacher Productivity with Information on Students and Skills: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh
Teachers may fail to address learning gaps because they do not know which students and skills need support. While exams are prevalent in every education system, these tests often go underutilized. We evaluate an intervention that provided grade-6 math teachers in 312 schools in Bangladesh with… more →
Parents’ Biased Beliefs and Competitive Investments in Education: A Field Experiment
Using a field experiment in China, we demonstrate that parental investment decisions are affected by their beliefs about their peers’ investment levels, and that they often hold biased beliefs about these levels. When provided information about the true distribution of tutoring hours invested… more →
From Pilot to Policy: Experimental Evidence from Scaling Online Tutoring
We study a randomized controlled trial of an online mathematics tutoring program scaled from a successful pilot and implemented entirely by regional education authorities in Spain, using interim public-school teachers rather than specially recruited tutors. Assignment to tutoring increased end… more →
Nudging Parents out the Door: The Impacts of Parental Encouragement on School Choice and Test Scores
This study evaluates a large-scale SMS outreach program to engage caregivers of students in private primary schools in Kenya. Using a two-stage randomization design, we tested two types of weekly SMS messages: growth-mindset encouragement and personalized performance information. We find two… more →
Investing in Human Capital During Wartime: Experimental Evidence from Ukraine
This paper provides insights into human capital investments during wartime by presenting evidence from three experiments of an online tutoring program for Ukrainian students amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Conducted between early 2023 and mid-2024, the experiments reached nearly 10,000… more →
The Returns to Education over time and the Effect of COVID-19
This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the returns to education in the United States. Using data from the Current Population Survey 2011-2022, the analysis reveals that, after a period of decline, returns to education increased significantly because of COVID, particularly… more →
COVID-19, School Closures, and Student Learning Outcomes: New Global Evidence from PISA
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant disruption in schooling worldwide. This paper uses global test score data to estimate learning losses. It models the effect of school closures on achievement by predicting the deviation of the most recent results from a linear trend using data from… more →
Learning during the Pandemic: Evidence from Uzbekistan
School closures induced by the COVID-19 pandemic led to concerns about student learning. This paper evaluates the effect of school closures on student learning in Uzbekistan, using a unique dataset that allows assessing change in learning over time. The findings show that test scores in math for… more →
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? The Gap between Students’ Test Performance and Teachers’ Estimations in India and Bangladesh
This is one of the first studies of the mismatch between students’ test scores and teachers’ estimations of those scores in low- and middle-income countries. Prior studies in high-income countries have found strong correlations between these metrics. We leverage data on actual and estimated… more →
Capturing the Educational and Economic Impacts of School Closures in Poland
The effect of school closures in the spring of 2020 on the math, science, and reading skills of secondary school students in Poland is estimated. The COVID-19-induced school closures lasted 26 weeks in Poland, one of Europe's longest periods of shutdown. Comparison of the learning outcomes with… more →
What makes a program good? Evidence from short-cycle higher education programs in five developing countries
Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) can play a central role in skill development and higher education expansion, yet their quality varies greatly within and among countries. In this paper we explore the relationship between programs’ practices and inputs (quality determinants) and… more →
Cows Don't Give Milk: An Effort Model of College Graduation
This paper estimates a dynamic model of college enrollment, progression, and graduation. A central feature of the model is student effort, which has a direct effect on class completion and an indirect effect mitigating risks on class completion and college persistence. The estimated model… more →
The Limited Impact of Free College Policies
Despite the growing popularity of free college proposals, countries with higher college subsidies tend to have higher enrollment rates but not higher graduation rates. To capture this evidence and evaluate potential free college policies, we rely on a dynamic model of college enrollment,… more →
Labor Market Effects of Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs: Lessons from Colombia
This paper estimates the heterogeneous labor market effects of enrolling in higher education short-cycle (SC) programs. Expanding access to these programs might affect the behavior of some students (compliers) in two margins: the expansion margin (students who would not have enrolled in higher… more →
The contribution of short-cycle programs to student outcomes: Evidence from Colombia
Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs), lasting two or three years, capture about a quarter of higher education enrollment in the world and can play a key role enhancing workforce skills. In this paper, we estimate the program-level contribution of SCPs to student academic and labor market… more →
The Dynamic Market for Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs
Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) form skilled human capital in two or three years and could be key to upskilling and reskilling the workforce, provided their supply responds fast and nimbly to local labor market needs. We study determinants of SCP entry and exit in Colombia for… more →
Can interactive online training make high school students more entrepreneurial? Experimental evidence from Rwanda
We study the short-run effects of a gamified online entrepreneurship training offered to high school students in Rwanda during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a randomized controlled trial, we estimate sizeable effects of the 6-week training on entrepreneurial activity. One month after the training… more →