Spain is a decentralized country as far as government spending is concerned, operating a system in which its regions or autonomous communities play a particularly relevant role – administering roughly a third of total public expenditure – and where their fiscal outcomes have a significant impact on general fiscal policy...

We use census data on external assessments in primary and secondary school in the Basque Country (Spain) to estimate learning losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2021, one year after school closures, which lasted from March to June 2020. Differences-in-differences with student and school-by-grade fixed effects show an...

We study, theoretically and empirically, the link between voters’ support for public education and pensions when agents are free to choose between public and private education. We show that the (inter-generational) redistributive component in the retirement system creates a link between pensions and education. Specifically, the current investment in education...

In developed countries, the importance of university systems for their respective societies is far greater than their specific weight. The contribution they make, in terms of training human capital, research and knowledge transfer, is a decisive force for the development of the knowledge society in said countries – and Spain...

Islamophobia has increased in recent years which can be partly attributed to terrorist attacks perpetrated by jihadist groups. Islamophobia might be a source of stress, being problematic for pregnant (Muslim) women. We examine how stress generated by the 2017 Catalonia (Spain) attacks affected the health of newborns whose mothers are...

The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 inhibited face-to-face education and constrained exam taking. In many countries worldwide, high-stakes exams happening at the end of the school year determine college admissions. This paper investigates the impact of using historical data of school and high-stakes exams results to train a model to...