Researchers commonly "shrink" raw quality measures based on statistical criteria. This paper studies when and how this transformation’s statistical properties would confer economic benefits to a utility-maximizing decisionmaker across common asymmetric information environments. I develop the...

This note examines the potential output gains from the implementation of optimal teacher incentive pay schemes, by calibrating the Hölmstrom and Milgrom (1987) hidden action model using data from Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2011), a teacher incentive pay experiment implemented in Andhra...

This paper views teacher quality through the human capital perspective. Teacher quality exhibits substantial growth over teachers’ careers, but why it improves is not well understood. I use a human capital production function nesting On-the-Job-Training (OJT) and Learning-by-Doing (LBD) and...

We develop and estimate a model of student study time on a social network. The model is designed to exploit unique data collected in the Berea Panel Study. Study time data allow us to quantify an intuitive mechanism for academic social interactions: own study time may depend on friend study time...