This paper presents a comprehensive but relatively brief historical survey of U.S. trade-policy over the last 75 years. It is aimed at individuals who are not already familiar with the concepts and terminology used in discussions of trade policy and the domestic and international institutional...

We study how class size and class composition affect the academic and labor market performance of college students, two crucial policy questions given the secular increase in college enrollment. Our identification strategy relies on the random assignment of students to teaching classes. We find...

We use the unique experiences of Canadian World War II veterans to identify the effects of a large scale college subsidy program on educational attainment and earnings. Like the United States, Canada set up an extensive veteran's assistance program that provided financial aid and institutional...

To study the effects of ability grouping on school competition, we develop a theoretical and computational model of tracking in public and private schools. We examine tracking's consequences for the allocation of students of differing abilities and income within and between public and private...

The purpose of this paper is to study identification and estimation of causal effects in experiments with multiple sources of noncompliance. This research design arises in many applications in education when access to oversubscribed programs is partially determined by randomization. Eligible...

One of the best documented relationships in economics is the link between education and income: higher educated people have higher incomes. Advocates argue that education provides skills, or human capital, that raises an individual's productivity. Critics argue that the documented relationship...

We link information on the current earnings of college graduates from many cohorts to their high-school records, their detailed college records and their demographics to infer the impact of college major on earnings. We develop an estimator to handle the potential for non-response bias and...

This paper estimates the effect of binge and frequent drinking by adolescents on subsequent high school dropout using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Young Adults. We estimate an instrumental variables model with an indicator of any past month alcohol use, which is by...

Research on the relationship between teachers' characteristics and teacher effectiveness has been underway for over a century, yet little progress has been made in linking teacher quality with factors observable at the time of hire. However, most research has examined a relatively small set of...

A special exemption from the 1986 Age Discrimination Act allowed colleges and universities to enforce mandatory retirement of faculty at age 70 until 1994. We compare faculty turnover rates at a large sample of institutions before and after the federal law change, and at a set of institutions...