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We investigate the long-run impact of college remedial education on students' academic performance and employment status. By implementing a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design we show that attending remedial courses positively affects the probability to get a university degree, whereas no significant effect is found on labour market outcomes.

We investigate the effects of a large-scale Norwegian reform that provided extra teachers to 166 lower secondary schools with relatively high student-teacher ratios and low average grades. We exploit these two margins using a regression discontinuity setup and find that the reform reduced the student-teacher ratio by around 10% (from a base level of 22 students per teacher), with no crowding out of other school resources or parental support. However, the reform did not improve test scores and longer-term academic outcomes, and we can reject even small positive effects. We do find that the reform improved the school environment from the students’ perspective, but with the largest impact on aspects most weakly associated with better academic outcomes. Delfinansiert av Utdanningsdirektoratet

The objective of this work is to analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on the behavior of Brazilian municipal policy makers. This work uses the first three cutoffs of the transfer rules of the Municipal Participation Fund (FPM) and applies a Discontinuous Regression model (RDD) to capture the effects that affect municipal budget rates during the years 2013 to 2016. The comportment hypotheses is that transfer gains can generate: i) perverse incentives, if the gains are earmarked for personnel and administrative expenses or decrease revenues; or ii) beneficial incentives, if the main gains are spent on education or health. The results found for the estimates of the data panel model is that the increase in exogenous revenue generates a significant increase in spending only in administrative and sports and leisure functions and that the possible channel for this increase in expenses should be aimed at increasing number of employees with commissioned cargo. These results indicate that the transfers generate only perverse incentives.

Many rights are conferred on Dutch youth at ages 16 and 18. Using national register data for all reported victimizations, we find sharp and discontinuous increases in victimization rates at these ages: about 13% for both genders at 16 and 9% (15%) for males (females) at 18. These results are comparable across subsamples (based on socio-economic and neighborhood characteristics) with different baseline victimization risks. We assess potential mechanisms using data on offense location, cross-cohort variation in the minimum legal drinking age driven by a 2014 reform, and survey data of alcohol/drug consumption and mobility behaviors. We conclude that the bundle of access to weak alcohol, bars/clubs and smoking increases victimization at 16 and that age 18 rights (hard alcohol, marijuana coffee shops) exacerbate this risk; vehicle access does not play an important role. Finally, we do not find systematic spillover effects onto individuals who have not yet received these rights.

I show how local supply changes create ripple effects in a national educational market. Admitting an applicant to a program will free up a slot to be filled at her next-best alternative. To investigate such substitution effects I re-engineer the centralized admission system of the Danish tertiary education sector and simulate equilibria under counterfactual supply. I estimate potential earnings with a regression discontinuity design and quantify market clearings in terms of earnings. On average, a change of 10 slots leads to 15 applicants moving and substitution effects explain 40 percent of the variation in earnings. Substitution externalities are generally positive but vary in sign and magnitude. I document a trade-off between earnings and inequality.

Income inequality is a distributional phenomenon. This paper examines the impact of U.S governor's party allegiance (Republican vs Democrat) on ethnic wage gap. A descriptive analysis of the distribution of yearly earnings of Whites and Blacks reveals a divergence in their respective shapes over time suggesting that aggregate analysis may mask important heterogeneous effects. This motivates a granular estimation of the comparative causal effect of governors' party affiliation on labor market outcomes. We use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) based on marginal electoral victories and samples of quantiles groups by wage and hours worked. Overall, the distributional causal estimations show that the vast majority of subgroups of black workers earnings are not affected by democrat governors' policies, suggesting the possible existence of structural factors in the labor markets that contribute to create and keep a wage trap and/or hour worked trap for most of the subgroups of black workers. Democrat governors increase the number of hours worked of black workers at the highest quartiles of earnings. A bivariate quantiles groups analysis shows that democrats decrease the total hours worked for black workers who have the largest number of hours worked and earn the least. Black workers earning more and working fewer hours than half of the sample see their number of hours worked increase under a democrat governor.

Despite a growing literature on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, scant evidence currently exists on its impacts on air quality. We offer the first study that provides cross-national evidence on the causal impacts of COVID-19 on air pollution. We assemble a rich database consisting of daily, sub-national level data of air quality for 178 countries before and after the COVID-19 lockdowns, and investigate their impacts on air quality using a Regression Discontinuity Design approach. We find the lockdowns to result in significant decreases in global air pollution. These results are consistent across measures of air quality and data sources and robust to various model specifications. Some limited evidence emerges that countries with a higher share of trade and manufacturing in the economy or with an initially lower level of air pollution witness more reduced air pollution after the lockdowns; but the opposite result holds for countries near the equator. We also find that mobility restrictions following the lockdowns are a possible explanation for improved air quality.

In this paper we present a life-cycle model with human capital investment during working life through training and provide a novel empirical test of human capital theory. Using a sizable pension reform which shifts the retirement age between two adjacent cohorts by three years, we document causal evidence that an increase in the working life increases investment into human capital through training. We estimate this effect using a regression discontinuity design based on a large sample from the German microcensus. We discuss and test further predictions regarding the relation between initial schooling, training, and the reform effect and show that only individuals with a college degree increase human capital investment. Our results speak to a large class of human capital models as well as policies extending or shortening working life.

The paper examines the impact of class size on postgraduate grades using administrative data from one of the largest Schools of a Russell Group University in the UK. As well as estimating Fixed Effects models on the population of postgraduate candidates in the School, we exploit a policy change aimed at reducing class size to implement a regression discontinuity design (RDD). We find that class size does impact grades adversely overall; and the policy aimed at reducing class size impacts grades favourably. Our findings are robust to alternative specifications as well as being supported by the validity tests we conducted.

Policymakers are concerned about potential underinvestment in lifelong learning. In this paper we study to what extent a tax deduction helps to stimulate post-initial training. Specifically, we employ a regression kink and regression discontinuity design as jumps in tax bracket rates generate exogenous variation in the effective costs of lifelong learning. Using high quality data on tax returns of the universe of Dutch taxpayers, we find that the tax deduction has heterogeneous effects on lifelong learning. Low-income singles show no response. For high-income singles we find an effect of 10% on the probability to use the tax deduction. Furthermore, ignoring shifting of expenses between partners leads to spurious large estimates for primary earners and spurious negative estimates for secondary earners.

This paper analyses the relationship between corporate governance and tax avoidance. We use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) in a two-stage instrumental variable and take advantage of the exogenous variation in the index membership around the DAX and MDAX threshold. We suppose the differences in corporate governance result from the valueweighted composition of the market capitalization-based indexes. We find a significant discontinuity in the level of the corporate governance characteristics at the cutoff. The largest MDAX firms show stronger corporate governance characteristics compared to the smallest DAX firms. Our analysis shows that strong corporate governance characteristics drive down the effective tax rate for the DAX firms. This paper contributes to existing research by establishing a causal relationship between governance and taxes. This research aims to highlight the wide-ranging effects of institutional investors, which channel in corporate policy, in our case tax management.

We investigate the impact of the "Metrobank Award for Outstanding Teachers" using a unique dataset from a survey of teachers who competed from 1988 to 2010. Our study is one of the firsts to use income as the primary indicator of success. When the sample is limited to those who were actively teaching in 2014, we find that the Award had a higher impact on awardees who were relatively younger. The intuitive explanation is that "younger" awardees have more years in their career to capitalize on the Award.

Many people are concerned about societal cohesion in the face of higher numbers of foreigners migrating to Western democracies. The challenge for the future is to find and adopt institutions that foster integration. We investigate how the right to vote in local elections affects immigrants' compliance with the law. In our study for Denmark, we exploit an institutional regulation that grants foreigners local voting rights after three years of stay. Relying on register data, we find causal evidence that the first possibility to vote considerably reduces the number of legal offenses of non-Western male immigrants in the time after elections.

The paper analyses the causal effect of capital subsidies on firms? efficiency and productivity by exploiting the conditions for a local random experiment created by Law 488/92 (henceforth L488), which has been an important policy instrument for reducing territorial disparities in Italy. The presence of sharp discontinuities in the L488 rankings used for allocating subsidies to projects allows us to use a regression discontinuity design (henceforth RDD). We show that a suitable decomposition of TFP can be applied to a large sample of subsidized firms for a relevant period of time, allowing to evaluate either the roles of technical progress and technical efficiency change, or scale and allocative efficiency change as determinants of granted firms? long-term growth. The stochastic frontier model used in this study assumes that technical inefficiency evolves over time, enabling to decompose productivity changes into the change in technical efficiency (i.e., measuring the movement of an economy towards, or away from, the production frontier), and technical progress (measuring shifts of the frontier over time). Moreover, because a flexible technology is used, the SFA allows to evaluate the presence of scale efficiency, as well as the additional measurement of changes in allocative efficiency (i.e., the Bauer-Kumbhakar decomposition; Bauer, 1990; Kumbhakar, 2000; Kumbhakar and Lovell, 2000; Brummer et al., 2002). Unlike the previous literature, we estimate the effects of the subsidies after 5 years from the subsidized investment. The results show that , after four years, the impact of public subsidies on TFP and efficiency is positive and statistically significant.

This paper uses the vote on the Swiss minaret initiative as a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of negative attitudes towards immigrants on foreigners' location choices and thus indirectly on their utility. Based on a regression discontinuity design with unknown discontinuity points and administrative data on the population of foreigners, we find that the probability of their moving to a municipality that unexpectedly expressed strong reservations decreases initially by about 60 percent. The effect levels off over a period of about 5 months. Consistent with a reduction in the identity utility for immigrants in general, the reaction is not confined to Muslims, whereby high-skilled foreigners seem to be most sensitive to the newly revealed reservations.

The need for graduates who would be productive citizens able to contribute significantly to the Nigerian economy led to the overhaul of the old education system 6-5-4 and the implementation of the 6-3-3-4 system, with its first set of graduates from secondary schools in 1988. The main objective of the 6-3-3- 4 system was to produce self-reliant graduates with better labor market skills and earning potential. In this paper, we investigate to what extent this goal was achieved. Using a Regression Discontinuity (RD) design, we examine if graduates from the 6-3-3-4 system experienced an improvement in welfare compared to those from the old system. We measure welfare improvement using several indicators such as a decline in poverty likelihood and poverty gap, an increase in the probability of employment and an increase in wages. Our results provide some evidence that the new system led to a decrease in the likelihood of being poor compared to those who passed through the old system. We also provide evidence of higher wages for select participants. We do not find any consistent evidence that the 6-3-3-4 system increased the probability of being employed when we compare participants from both systems. Our results suggest that while the system change may not have met some of its critical objectives, it cannot be viewed as totally ineffective.

Eines der am häufigsten genannten Vorschläge in der Diskussion um die Deregulierung des Arbeitsmarktes ist die Lockerung des Kündigungsschutzgesetzes (KSchG). Für kleine Unternehmen stellt, so die Hypothese, der Schwellenwert im Kündigungsschutzgesetz ein Einstellungshindernis dar, da sie durch die Einstellung eines weiteren Mitarbeiters und das Überspringen des Wertes in den Geltungsbereich des Gesetzes fielen. Die vorliegende Arbeit unterzieht diese These einer empirischen Überprüfung.Grundlage der Schätzung von Treatment-Effekten stellen Gesetzesänderungen der Jahre 1996 und 1998 dar. Damals wurde der Schwellenwert zunächst von fünf auf zehn Mitarbeiter erhöht, um zwei Jahre später wieder gesenkt zu werden. Der Schätzansatz ist ein Regression Discontinuity Design. Lokale Treatment-Effekte können dann nicht-parametrisch geschätzt werden. Die Datenbasis bildet das IAB-Betriebspanel mit seinen Wellen 1996 bis 2003. Für die erste Lockerung des KSchG im Jahr 1996 sind keine signifikanten Unterschiede zwischen Kontroll- und Treatmentgruppe zu beobachten. Der erwartete, beschäftigungshemmende Effekt des Schwellenwertes konnte damit nicht nachgewiesen werden. Das Ergebnis bestätigt frühere Arbeiten, die ebenfalls keine starken empirischen Belege für den vermuteten Effekt gefunden haben. One of the proposals most frequently raised to increase flexibility of the German labour market is the liberalization of the job protection law. It applies only to those firms employing a more than a cut-off number of employees. Thus, firms just above the cut-off face considerably higher adjustment costs in times of lower demand for labour than their competitors with a firm size lower than this number. An argument produced in the discussion is that this step in legal regulation hinders small firms from growing beyond this cut-off number. The basis for estimating the treatment effect of empoyment protection is a change in the cut-off number in the year 1996. y that time the cut-off number was raised to ten employees releaving small firms between five and ten full-time workers from coverage by the law. The evaluation approach is a Regression Discontinuity Design using the change in legislation as a natural experiment. The local treatment effect can then be estimated non-parametrically. The method used is a local linear regression. The data base used is the 1997 wave of the IAB establishment panel containing some 8 000 firm level observations. The paper is one of the few using micro data to evaluate effects of job protections measures. To my knowledge it is the first one to exploit the policy change named above and controlling for self-selection into the treatment job protection.

One proposal frequently raised to increase flexibility of the German labour market is the liberalization of the job protection law. It applies to those establishments with more than a cut-off number of employees. The argument examined in this paper is that this step in legal regulation hinders small enterprises from job creation. Changes in the cut-off number in the late 1990's provide the basis for estimating this effect. The evaluation approach is a Regression Discontinuity Design using these changes as natural experiments. Local treatment effects can be estimated non-parametrically by local linear regression. The data base used is the IAB establishment panel. The paper is the first one to exploit the policy changes named above and controlling for self-selection into the treatment job protection using minimal assumptions concerning model specification. The results are in line with earlier studies finding no evidence for hindering effects on job growth in small establishments. Eines der am häufigsten genannten Vorschläge, um den deutschen Arbeitsmarkt zu flexibilisieren, ist die Lockerung des Kündigungsschutzgesetzes. Es findet Anwendung für Betriebe, die einen Schwellenwert an Mitarbeitern überschreiten. Die These, die in dieser Arbeit untersucht werden soll, ist die, dass diese Schwelle im Gesetz Kleinbetriebe daran hindere, Einstellungen vorzunehmen.Änderungen im Schwellenwert in den späten 1990er Jahren bilden die Basis für die Schätzung dieses Effektes. Der Auswertungsansatz ist ein Regression Discontinuity Design, für das diese Änderungen als natürliche Experimente verwendet werden. Lokale Treatmenteffekte können nicht-parametrisch mittels lokaler linearer Regression geschätzt werden.Dieses Papier ist das erste, das die oben genannten Gesetzesänderungen benutzt, um für Selbstselektion zu kontrollieren, und sich dabei auf minimale Annahmen bezüglich der Modellspezifikation stützt. Die Ergebnisse stimmen mit früheren Untersuchungen überein, die keine solchen beschäftigungshemmenden Effekte für Kleinbetriebe nachweisen konnten.