Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan compare three quasi-experimental approaches to estimating the returns to schooling in Australia: instrumenting schooling using month of birth, instrumenting schooling using changes in compulsory schooling laws, and comparing outcomes for twins. Abstract

Government subsidies have provided a major source of funds to private schools in Australia for three decades. The increasing level of private school subsidies since the mid-1970s has contributed to a steady increase in the proportion of students enrolled in private schools. This growth in the private school share of enrolments was not inevitable, but...

This paper contains a comparison of high school completion rates across Australian states and territories from 1989 to 2002. Because the 'official' statistics contain a number of flaws, Chris Ryan and Louise Watson have produced adjusted figures which show that the peak in school retention rates in the early 1990s was less pronounced and the...

The authors describe Australia's Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), and analyse its impact on the social composition of university participation before and after the introduction of HECS. Their findings suggest that income contingent charging systems for higher education have the potential to protect the access of the disadvantaged.

In Australia in 1989, for the first time in the world, a broadly-based, income-contingent loan policy for the repayment of higher education charges was adopted. In this article Bruce Chapman and Chris Ryan argue that compared to all possible alternatives, income contingent loans are preferable for both economic and social reasons, so long as the...