We describe how a single technological innovation, the introduction of image processing of checks, led to distinctly different changes in the structure of jobs in two departments of a large bank overseen by one group of managers. In the downstairs deposit processing department, image processing...

We apply an understanding of what computers do -- the execution of procedural or rules-based logic -- to study how computer technology alters job skill demands. We contend that computer capital (1) substitutes for a limited and well-defined set of human activities, those involving routine...

Using data from two longitudinal surveys of American high school seniors, we show that basic cognitive skills had a larger impact on wages for 24-year-old men and women in 1986 than in 1978. For women, the increase in the return to cognitive skills between 1978 and 1986 accounts for all of the...

Several recent published papers have asserted that a growing proportion of workers with college degrees are either unemployed or employed in jobs requiring only high school skills. Using data from the 1980 and 1990 Censuses of Population and Housing, we show that this assertion does not...

We use data from multiple national surveys to describe trends in private elementary school enrollment by family income from 1968-2013. We note several important trends. First, the private school enrollment rate of middle-income families declined substantially over the last five decades, while...

In an effort to boost student achievement and reduce income-based gaps, the Chilean government passed the Preferential School Subsidy Law (SEP) in 2008, which altered the nation's 27-year-old universal school-voucher system dramatically. Implementation of SEP increased the value of the school...

The General Educational Development (GED) credential has become the primary 'second chance' route to high school certification for school dropouts in the United States. Despite the widespread use of the GED, however, bias due to self-selection has limited our knowledge about the effects of the...

Does the U.S. labor market reward cognitive skill differences among high school dropouts, the members of the labor force with the least educational attainments? This paper reports the results of an exploration of this question, using a new data set that provides information on the universe of...

This study capitalizes on a natural experiment that occurred in California between 2000 and 2002. In those years, the state offered a competitively allocated $20,000 incentive called the Governor's Teaching Fellowship (GTF) aimed at attracting academically talented, novice teachers to...

In an attempt to improve the quality of educational research, the U.S. Department of Education%u2019s Institute of Education Sciences has provided funding for 65 randomized controlled trials of educational interventions. We argue that this research methodology is more effective in providing...