This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the returns to education in the United States. Using data from the Current Population Survey 2011-2022, the analysis reveals that, after a period of decline, returns to education increased significantly because of COVID, particularly...

New hand-collected school administrative data from 1870s Virginia, alongside linked individual US Censusrecords, reveals that temporary school closures had lasting effects on literacy and income in adulthood. Those affected by the closures had lower intergenerational economic mobility,...

Grade retention offers students a chance to catch up with unmastered material but also leads to less labor-market experience by delaying graduation and labor-market entry. This is the first paper to quantify this trade-off, using an exit exam cutoff of Dutch academic secondary schools, where...

Duflo (2001) exploits a 1970s schooling expansion in Indonesia to estimate the returns to schooling. Under the study's difference-in-differences (DID) design, two patterns in the data-shallower pay scales for younger workers and negative selection in treatment-can violate the parallel trends...

We develop novel measures of early-career skills that are more detailed, comprehensive, and labor-market-relevant than existing skill proxies. We exploit that skill requirements of apprenticeships in Germany are codified in state-approved, nationally standardized apprenticeship plans. These...

Since smartphones became ubiquitous, online grocery and food purchases through digital platform have steadily increased in China. This study provides some of the first empirical evidence on the side effects of take-away delivery development on devaluing college wage premium. I make estimations...

This paper explores how school-age exposure to storms impacts the education and primary activity status of young adults in India. Using a cross-sectional cohort study based on wind exposure histories, we find evidence of a significant deskilling of areas vulnerable to climate change-related...

Standardized test scores and the labels associated with those scores provide students and their parents highly credible information about a student’s academic achievement. This information could cause students and their parents to change their beliefs regarding a student’s academic ability....

The authors use data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (C-NLSY79) to examine gender differences in the associations between child behavioral problems and early adult earnings. They find large and significant earnings penalties for women who exhibited more headstrong...