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...ses, classes within schools, schools within regions and school types, etc.). It is necessary to include this highly multilevel data structure into the empirical analysis to obtain unbiased estimates (=-=Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002-=-). This can be done by the use of a so called ‘hierarchical’ or ‘mixed’ model. This implies that the intercept - and in some models also the slopes - is allowed to randomly vary between groups. To est...

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... economics is that higher school resources do not necessarily yield higher pupil performance. Evidence for an overall large effect of school resource policies on pupil performance is largely missing (=-=Hanushek, 2003-=-; Wößmann, 2003). It cannot be excluded however that the effect of input-based policies on pupil performance is moderated by the incentive structure of school actors (Hanushek, 2003). Since the incent...

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...at higher school resources do not necessarily yield higher pupil performance. Evidence for an overall large effect of school resource policies on pupil performance is largely missing (Hanushek, 2003; =-=Wößmann, 2003-=-). It cannot be excluded however that the effect of input-based policies on pupil performance is moderated by the incentive structure of school actors (Hanushek, 2003). Since the incentive structure o...

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...ents, decentralization may have some additional negative implications, like increased levels of uncoordinated rent-seeking and corruption as government 7structures become more complex and devoluted (=-=Fan et al., 2009-=-), increased coordination costs and slower institutional reform. The most important negative consequence of increased autonomy may lie in a potential principal-agent problem (see Wößmann et al. (2007)...

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...chool resources and pupil performance. There is accumulating cross-country evidence that getting incentives right by a combination of monitoring and autonomy is beneficial for educational efficiency (=-=Wößmann, 2008-=-). Since these studies compare institutions across countries the results may be biased because of an obvious omitted variable problem. Any other source of cross-country variation, like legal or cultur...

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...ective accountability, autonomy is expected to enhance educational performance. Central examinations are a widely used accountability mechanism to align incentives between schools and the government (=-=Wößmann et al., 2007-=-), but other mechanisms can be used to attain this goal. In Flanders, instead of central examinations, inspection teams investigate on a regular basis whether the curriculum and teaching process are a...

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...971) and Niskanen (1991), for seminal work on budget maximizing bureaucrats). School autonomy may help schools to overcome bureaucratic rigidity and in this way impact student performance positively (=-=Bottani and Favre, 2001-=-; Chubb and Moe, 1990). Entrusting the provision of education to local agents may also lead to more efficient provision because local agents will be closer and more responsive to student needs and pre...

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...te that spread over almost all areas of the political and economic life, as the human 2capital acquired in a nation’s schooling system is generally regarded as the most valuable resource of society”(=-=Ammermüller, 2004-=-). Not without reason, the PISA 2000 publication was called the ‘PISA shock’ in Germany. In studies that use within-country variation of monitoring and autonomy, the problem of adequately controlling ...

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...hool principals (Van Petegem et al., 2009), case studies of schools (among others Caenepeel (1988), Devos et al. (1989) and Devos et al. (1999) and Van Petegem et al. (2009)) and an OECD review team (=-=Day et al., 2008-=-) document extreme differences in the responsibility structure within school governing bodies. In some school governing bodies, the school direction is delegated full operational responsibility over i...