Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we estimate the impact of breastfeeding initiation and duration on multiple cognitive, health, and behavioral outcomes spanning early childhood through adolescence. To mitigate the potential bias from misspecification, we employ a doubly robust...

We study semiparametric two-step estimators which have the same structure as parametric doubly robust estimators in their second step, but retain a fully nonparametric specification in the first step. Such estimators exist in many economic applications, including a wide range of missing data and...

We study semiparametric two-step estimators which have the same structure as parametric doubly robust estimators in their second step, but retain a fully nonparametric specification in the first step. Such estimators exist in many economic applications, including a wide range of missing data and...

We study the impact of a teacher strike on students still in compulsory school and about to choose their secondary education track. Using administrative data and a difference-in-differences approach, we estimate the effect of a regional strike in Finland on educational attainment and long-term...

Instrumental variables estimators typically must satisfy monotonicity conditions to be interpretable as capturing local average treatment effects. Building on previous research that suggests monotonicity is unlikely to hold in the context of school entrance age effects, we develop an approach...

This paper offers a thesis for why the US overtook the UK and other European countries in the 20th century in both aggregate and per capita GDP as a case study of recent models of endogenous growth, where "human capital" is the engine of growth. By human capital we mean an intangible asset, best...

Instruction time varies among schools, subjects, pupils and grades. This variation is positively associated with test scores and has been used to identify modest positive causal effects for instruction hours in certain grades. We exploit administrative data on delivered and timetabled...

A large number of studies in labor economics estimate the returns to schooling using data on monozygotic twins, under the assumption that educational attainment is random within twin pairs. This exogeneity assumption has been commonly questioned, however, but there is to date little evidence on...

We show that a calibrated dynamic skill accumulation model allowing for comparative advantages, can explain the weak (or negative) effects of schooling on productivity that have been recently reported (i) in the micro literature on compulsory schooling, ii) in the micro literature on estimating...

This paper investigates if better access to secondary education increases enrolment in primary schools among children in the 6-10 age group. Using a household-level longitudinal survey covering 43 villages in a poor state in India, we find support for the hypothesis that better access to...