Literature examining immigrants' educational disadvantage across countries focuses generally on average differences in educational outcomes between immigrants and natives disguising thereby that immigrants are a highly heterogeneous group. The aim of this paper is to examine educational...

In light of the recent rise in childhood obesity, the School Breakfast Program (SBP) and National School Lunch Program (NSLP) have received renewed attention. Using panel data on over 13,500 primary school students, we assess the relationship between SBP and NSLP participation and (relatively)...

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...

Fueled by new evidence, there has been renewed interest about the effects of birth order on human capital accumulation. The underlying causal mechanisms for such effects remain unsettled. We consider a model in which parents impose more stringent disciplinary environments in response to their...

In this study I examine the relationship between accountability (e.g., state sanctions for poor performance, or the presence of goals required by the district) and public secondary principal pay and school performance. Though such incentives and standards are increasingly common, the existing...

The proportion of students who do not graduate from high school is dramatically higher among the two largest minority groups, Hispanics and African-Americans, compared to non-Hispanic whites. In this paper we utilize unique student-level data from the Texas Schools Microdata Panel (TSMP) in an...

To what extent, and under what conditions, does access to arms fuel violent crime? To answer this question, we exploit a unique natural experiment: the 2004 expiration of the U.S. Federal Assault Weapons Ban exerted a spillover on gun supply in Mexican municipios near Texas, Arizona and New...

This paper tests whether school-to-work (STW) programs are particularly beneficial for those less likely to go to college in their absence often termed the forgotten half in the STW literature. The empirical analysis is based on the NLSY97, which allows us to study six types of STW programs,...

This paper is the first to use a randomized trial in the US to analyze the short- and long-term impacts of an after-school program that offered disadvantaged high-school youth: mentoring, educational services, and financial rewards to attend program activities, complete high-school and enroll in...

A growing proportion of the U.S. workforce will have been raised in disadvantaged environments that are associated with relatively high proportions of individuals with diminished cognitive and social skills. A cross-disciplinary examination of research in economics, developmental psychology, and...