This paper presents new evidence that increases in college enrollment lead to a decline in the average quality of college graduates between 1960 and 2000, resulting in a decrease of 6 percentage points in the college premium. We show that although a standard demand and supply framework can...

The vast majority of immigrants to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century adopted first names that were common among natives. The rate of adoption of an American name increases with time in the US, although most immigrants adopt an American name within the first year of arrival....

Blau and Kahn (JOLE, 1997; ILRR, 2006) decomposed trends in the U.S. gender earnings gap into observable and unobservable components using the PSID. They found that the unobservable part contributed significantly not only to the rapidly shrinking earnings gap in the 1980s, but also to the...

The Cold War division of Korea, regarded as a natural experiment in institutional change, provides a unique opportunity to examine whether institutions affect social preferences. We recruited North Korean refugees and South Korean students to conduct laboratory experiments eliciting social...

We assigned two cohorts of kindergarten students, totaling more than 24,000 children, to teachers within schools with a rule that is as-good-as-random. We collected data on children at the beginning of the school year, and applied 12 tests of math, language and executive function (EF) at the end...

We examine the labor market consequences of an exogenous increase in the supply of skilled labor in several cities in Norway, resulting from the construction of new colleges in the 1970s. We find that skilled wages increased as a response, suggesting that along with an increase in the supply...

We study the impact on children of increasing the time that the mother spends with her child in the first year by exploiting a reform that increased paid and unpaid maternity leave in Norway. The reform increased maternal leave on average by 4 months and family income was unaffected. The...

This paper estimates the marginal returns to college for individuals induced to enroll in college by different marginal policy changes. The recent instrumental variables literature seeks to estimate this parameter, but in general it does so only under strong assumptions that are tested and found...

This paper estimates average and marginal returns to schooling in Indonesia using a non-parametric selection model. Identification of the model is given by exogenous geographic variation in access to upper secondary schools. We find that the return to upper secondary schooling varies widely...

Enforcement of labor regulations in the formal sector may drive workers to informality because they increase the costs of formal labor. But better compliance with mandated benefits makes it attractive to be a formal employee. We show that, in locations with frequent inspections workers pay for...