Previous findings from experimental and non-experimental studies have demonstrated that teachers differ in their effectiveness. In addition, evidence from non-experimental studies has indicated that teacher effects can last up to five years. This study used high-quality data from a four-year...

Given that previous findings on the social distribution of the effects of small classes have been mixed and inconclusive, in the present study I attempted to shed light on the mechanism through which small classes affect the achievement of low- and high-achieving students. I used data from a...

Multilevel models are widely used in education and social science research. However, the effects of omitting levels of the hierarchy on the variance decomposition and the clustering effects have not been well documented. This paper discusses how omitting one level in three-level models affects...

We use panel data from El Salvador and investigate the intra-household allocation of labor as a risk-coping strategy. Adverse agricultural productivity shocks both increased male migration to the US and male agricultural labor supply. This is not a contradiction if there were non-monotonic...

We investigate the impact of exogenous income fluctuations on health using twenty years of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics using techniques from the literature on the estimation of dynamic panel data models. Contrary to much of the previous literature on health and socio-economic...

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we investigate the impact of health on domestic migration within the United States. We find that, for men below 60 years of age, a move from the middle to the bottom of the health distribution reduces mobility by 32-40%. Non-random attrition...

We employ a standard identification strategy from the peer effects literature to investigate the importance of network definitions in estimation of endogenous peer effects. We use detailed information on friends in the Adolescent Longitudinal Health Survey (Add Health) to construct two network...

We investigate the evolution of health over the life-cycle. We allow for two sources of persistence: unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence. Estimation indicates that there is a large degree of heterogeneity. For half the population, there are modest degrees of state dependence. For the...

We consider the possibility that demographic variables are measured with errors which arise because household surveys measure demographic structures at a point-in-time, whereas household composition evolves throughout the survey period. We construct and estimate sharp bounds on household size...

We investigate the evolution of health inequality over the life-course. Health is modeled as a latent variable that is determined by three factors: endowments, and permanent and transitory shocks. We employ Simulated Minimum Distance and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the model....