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In light of the debate over inclusive education, this paper evaluates the impact of exposure to special needs (SN) peers. More classroom peers with SN lower performance, the probability of entering postcompulsory education, and income at ages 17 to 25. SN students and students at the lower end of the achievement distribution suffer most from higher inclusion. We analyze the effects of reallocation policies to alleviate negative externalities, and demonstrate that inclusion is preferable to segregation in terms of maximizing average test scores.

We describe benchmark experiments to evaluate the frictional properties of laser patterned low-density polyethylene as a function of sliding velocity, normal force, and humidity. The pattern is a square lattice of square cavities with sub-mm spacing. We find that dynamic friction decreases compared to nonpatterned surfaces, since stress concentrations lead to early detachment, and that stick-slip behavior is also affected. Friction increases with humidity, and the onset of stick-slip events occurs in the high humidity regime. Experimental results are compared with numerical simulations of a simplified 2D spring-block model. A good qualitative agreement can be obtained by introducing a deviation from the linear behavior of the Amontons-Coulomb law with the load due to a saturation in the effective contact area with pressure. This also leads to the improvement of the quantitative results of the spring-block model by reducing the discrepancy with the experimental results, indicating the robustness of the adopted simplified approach, which could be adopted to design patterned surfaces with controlled friction properties.

This paper examines how exposure to students identified as gifted (IQ ≥ 130) affects achievement in secondary school, enrollment in post-compulsory education, and occupational choices. By using student-level administrative data on achievement combined with psychological examination records, we study the causal impact of gifted students on their classmates in unprecedented detail. We find a positive and significant effect of the exposure to gifted students on school achievement in both math and language. The impact of gifted students is, however, highly heterogeneous along three dimensions. First, we observe the strongest effects among male students and high achievers. Second, we show that male students benefit from the presence of gifted peers in all subjects regardless of their gender, whereas female students seem to benefit primarily from the presence of female gifted students. Third, we find that gifted students diagnosed with emotional or behavioral disorders have zero-to-negative effects on their classmates' performance, a detrimental effect more pronounced for female students. Finally, exposure to gifted students in school has consequences that extend beyond the classroom: it increases the likelihood of choosing a selective academic track as well as occupations in STEM fields.

We use a unique longitudinal data set to study the development of non-cognitive skills in adolescence. We measure – for the first time – the development over six years of the recently introduced non-cognitive skill “Grit.” We also measure the traditional Big Five personality traits. For Grit, we find significant within-person mean-level increases of about .5 standard deviation units for our sample of adolescent students. These increases are comparable with increases in the Big Five, where conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability also increase with similar magnitude. We show that these changes are heterogeneous and robust to reasonable measurement error.

Children starting school older consistently exhibit better educational outcomes. In this paper, we underscore child development as a mechanism driving this effect. Using unique administrative data on health examinations, we study the causal effect of school starting age (SSA) on a child's probability of being diagnosed with special educational needs in early grades. Results show that children with higher SSA are less likely to develop behavioral problems and speech impediments, whereas learning disabilities, ADHD, and dyslexia/dyscalculia remain unaffected. Importantly, these effects only arise after primary school entry and are not due to preexisting health conditions. We also find that teachers tend to over-refer relatively young children to special needs services, but this over-referring behavior is not driving the results, which are based on psychologists' diagnoses. The SSA effect persists throughout compulsory schooling, resulting in higher test scores and better quality vocational training contracts. However, SSA does not affect employment, earnings, or disability insurance benefits at labor market entry.

The authors examined the short- and long-term effects of high school exit exams (HSEEs) on graduation rates and achievement using an interrupted time series approach. There is a positive overall effect of HSEE introduction for graduation rate trends, which is heterogeneous over time. HSEEs have a negative impact on graduation rates in the year of introduction and briefly after, which is short lived and becomes positive (but not statistically significant) over the long term. There is also a preintervention negative effect, suggesting that high schools prepare for the HSEE before introduction. There are no effects for achievement, possibly due to the lack of meaningful cross-state achievement data. The findings are robust to the inclusion of states that do not have HSEEs as a control group and also robust to controlling for No Child Left Behind introduction.

In light of the ongoing debate over tighter firearm regulations, this paper considers the relationship between gun prevalence and suicide. I exploit a reform in Switzerland that reduced the prevalence of military-issued guns in private households. In Switzerland, military service is compulsory for men, and military-issued guns account for nearly half of the total number of firearms available. The results show that the firearm suicide rate decreases by 9% for a reduction in gun prevalence of 1000 guns per 100,000 inhabitants. The elasticity of gun suicides with respect to firearm prevalence is +0.48, but converges towards zero for low levels of gun prevalence. The overall suicide rate is negatively and significantly related to firearm prevalence, which indicates that non-gun methods of suicide are not perfect replacements for firearms.

The increasing recognition of non-cognitive skills in economics has led many researchers to investigate how educational practices enhance these skills. In this paper, we focus on the non-cognitive skill known as ‘grit’, and we study the causal relation between class size and grit. Using data from follow-up surveys of Project STAR, we show that fourth-grade pupils who experienced small classes during early grades are 0.12 standard deviations higher in grit than their peers in regular classes. We also show that grit matters, because nearly half of the effect of smaller classes on test scores operates through grit. The effects of grit are far-reaching: students with higher grit have better grades at the end of compulsory schooling, are more likely to graduate from high school on time and are more likely to take a college entrance exam.

Using data from the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio experiment and subsequent follow-up surveys, we estimate unconditional quantile treatment e ects of being assigned to a small-size class and a regular-size class with an aide, compared to regular-size one. Results show that mid-achievers pro t the most from being assigned to a small class. Students at the bottom or top of the achievement distribution experience almost no gain. The analysis also reveals a positive and signi cant e ect of a regular class with teacher's aide for students at the bottom of the achievement distribution, an effect stronger for boys and disadvantaged pupils. In line with previous research, we show that being assigned to a small class during K-3 grades has a positive e ect test scores in later grades, on the likelihood of on-time high school graduation, and on taking the ACT/SAT exam. However, these positive e ects are driven mostly by students who were high achievers during Project STAR, suggesting that the long-term bene ts of being in a small class shrink very quickly for low- and mid-achieving students.

This study presents evidence of heterogeneous returns to education over the wage distribution. The authors use instrumental variable quantile regression and data from the Swiss Labor Force Survey to identify the causal link between education and wages at different quantiles of the conditional distribution of wages. The results provide evidence that there is no unique causal effect of schooling and that for each individual the effect may deviate from those extensively documented by ordinary least squares or two-stage least squares. In particular, while ordinary quantile regression estimates increasing returns in the quantile index, once the endogeneity of schooling is taken into account the authors instead observe higher returns at lower quantiles of the wage distribution. Interpreting the quantile index as a measure of unobserved ability, the results suggest that higher-ability individuals have higher wages, but the slope of their wage-education profile is flatter than that for lower ability individuals.

As organisational governance has evolved from hierarchical structures to relational networks, project-based alliances are increasingly employed by automakers as part of their innovation strategy. In this study, we explore characteristics of different types of project-based alliances in the automotive industry. Employing dyadic data drawn from 59 new product development project-based alliances undertaken by two firms, we are able to discern the relevant characteristics of product, process, and software development projects. Our results suggest very different characteristics for each project type, with products and software presenting contrary results across almost all characteristics. Characteristics of process-focused projects are unique from either product and software alliance-based projects.

This study estimates the earning losses of workers experiencing an involuntary job separation. We employ, for the first time in the earning losses literature, a Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood estimator with fixed effects that has several advantages with respect to conventional fixed effects models. The Poisson estimator allows considering the full set of involuntary separations, including those with zero labor market earnings because of unemployment. By including individuals with zero earnings and by using our new method, the loss in the year of separation becomes larger than in previous studies. The loss starts with roughly 30% and, although it quickly shrinks, it remains at around 15% in the following years. In addition, we find that compared to other reasons for separation, the earning loss pattern is unique for involuntary separations, because no other type of separation implies such permanent scarring. This latter finding makes us confident that the self-reported involuntariness of a separation is a reliable source of information.