In this paper, we collect data on the inner-workings of 39 charter schools and correlate these data with school effectiveness. We find that traditionally collected input measures—class size, per-pupil expenditure, teacher certification, and teacher training—are not correlated with school...

We use the introduction of a means-tested voucher program in Florida to examine whether increased competitive pressure on public schools affects students' test scores. We find greater score improvements in the wake of the program introduction for students attending schools that faced more...

I examine changes in the city-suburban housing price gap in metropolitan areas with and without court-ordered desegregation plans over the 1970s, narrowing my comparison to housing units on opposite sides of district boundaries. Desegregation of public schools in central cities reduced the...

Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), an ambitious social experiment, combines community programs with charter schools. We provide the first empirical test of the causal impact of HCZ charters on educational outcomes. Both lottery and instrumental variable identification strategies suggest that the...

Lottery estimates suggest Massachusetts' urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond that of traditional urban public schools students, while nonurban charters reduce achievement from a higher baseline. The fact that urban charters are most effective for poor nonwhites and low-baseline...

This paper provides regression discontinuity evidence on development impacts of intergovernmental transfers. Extra transfers in Brazil increased local government spending per capita by about 20 percent over a 4 year period with no evidence of crowding out own revenue or other revenue sources....

We analyze a Massachusetts merit aid program that gives highscoring students tuition waivers at in-state public colleges with lower graduation rates than available alternative colleges. A regression discontinuity design comparing students just above and below the eligibility threshold finds that...

This paper uses data from three prominent exam high schools in New York City to estimate the impact of attending a school with high-achieving peers on college enrollment and graduation. Our identification strategy exploits sharp discontinuities in the admissions process. Applicants just eligible...

Conditional on enrollment, African American students are substantially less likely to graduate from four-year public universities than white students. Using administrative micro-data from Missouri, we decompose the graduation gap into racial differences in four factors: (i) how students sort to...

This paper examines the effect of peers on an individual's likelihood of retirement using an administrative dataset of all retirement-eligible Los Angeles teachers for the years 1998-2001. We use two large unexpected pension reforms that differentially impacted financial incentives within and...