Research Interests 

Economics of Education, Public Economics, Applied Microeconometrics, and Behavioral Economics.

Working Papers

Information Framing and Student Decisions: Evidence from an Opportunity Cost Intervention (with Lars Behlen, Oliver Himmler, and Robert Jäckle). CESifo Working Paper No. 12487, 2026. AEA RCT No. 8375

Opportunity costs are central to economic decision-making but often neglected. In a pre-registered experiment with 2,222 German university freshmen, one treatment provides salary information; another additionally frames it as the opportunity cost of delayed graduation. Only the opportunity cost framing causes students to update salary expectations. We find no effect on academic progress but a 2.8 percentage points increase in first-semester dropout (p=0.080), concentrated among high-dropout-probability students (5.9 pp, p=0.025). For these marginal students, dropping out instead of progressing faster is the actionable margin. By semester three, dropout rates converge, suggesting acceleration of eventual exits rather than additional dropouts. 

Helping Students to Succeed - The Long-Term Effects of Soft Commitments and Reminders (with Oliver Himmler, Robert Jäckle, and Philipp Weinschenk). CESifo Working Paper No. 11001, 2024. Revise & Resubmit at Journal of Public Economics.

To study whether a soft commitment device can help students succeed, we conduct a randomized field experiment and follow a cohort of tertiary students over six years. Students can commit to following their recommended study program structure, and they receive reminders each semester. This easily implementable, low-cost intervention is highly effective: it increases the five-year graduation rate (+15 percentage points) and reduces time to graduation (-0.42 semesters), driven by reduced dropout and an increase in credits obtained per semester. The effects are stronger for suspected procrastinators. A treatment only reminding students to follow the program structure has limited effects.