This paper studies the cyclicality of general vs. specific skill investments. Using administrative data on higher education and the German apprenticeship market between 1998 and 2018, I show that local labor market shocks at high school graduation reduce college attainment. Risk-averse and patient students remain in general skill tracks, while others shift toward vocational education. Low-achieving young men increase their expected relative returns to vocational education, whereas high-SES students shift toward general skills. These findings contrast the conventional wisdom of countercyclical college-going when specific skills serve as an outside option and highlight how economic shocks reinforce inequality.

This paper investigates the long-run consequences of a later school entry for personality traits. For identification, we exploit the statutory cutoff rules for school enrollment in Germany within a regression discontinuity design. We find that relatively older school starters have persistently lower levels of neuroticism in adulthood. This effect is entirely driven by women, which has important implications for gender gaps in the labor market, as women typically score significantly higher on neuroticism at all stages of life, which puts them at a disadvantage. Our results suggest that family decisions regarding compliance with enrollment cutoffs may have lasting implications for gender gaps in socio-emotional skills.

This study asks how public information on the within-field-of-study quality distribution of universities affects college choice. We combine an ordinal tier ranking published by the German newspaper “Die Zeit” and register data on higher education students. Differences-in-differences estimates show that being ranked in the top tier increases the average distance traveled by freshmen within a program by over 7%. The results are larger in dynamic specifications and robust to controlling for the local rent level. Rankings based on recommendations by faculty are overall less effective. We discuss how information provision on program quality can affect educational mismatch and implications for inequality.