A number of studies have shown that education reforms extending compulsory schooling reduce criminal behavior of those affected by the reform. We consider the effects of a major Swedish educational reform on crime by exploiting its staggered implementation across Sweden. We first show that the...

The federal government's Race to the Top competition has promoted the adoption of test-based performance measures as a component of teacher evaluations throughout many states, but the validity of these measures has been controversial among researchers and widely contested by teachers' unions. A...

In settings where resistance and rampant misinformation against vaccines exist, the prospect of containing infectious diseases remains a challenge. Can delivery of information regarding the benefits of vaccination through personal home visits by local ambassadors increase vaccine uptake? We...

One of the most robust findings in health economics is that higher-educated individuals tend to be in better health. This paper tests whether health disparities across education are to some extent due to differences in reporting error across education. We test this hypothesis using data from the...

Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

This study reports evidence from an unusual policy intervention - The Reaching Out of School Children (ROSC) project - in Bangladesh where school grants and education allowances are offered to attract hard-to-reach children to schools comprised of a single teacher and a classroom. The operating...

Students are admitted into higher education based on their past performance. This paper compares two measures of past cognitive skills: teacher and national exam scores. By using a nationwide dataset, we look at how the predictive power of teacher assessment and exam scores for selecting...