We consider the effects of student ability, college quality, and the interaction between the two on academic outcomes and earnings using data on two cohorts of college enrollees. Student ability and college quality strongly improve degree completion and earnings for all students. We find...

We document substantial variation in the effects of a highly-effective literacy pro-gram in northern Uganda. The program increases test scores by 1.40 SDs on average, but standard statistical bounds show that the impact standard deviation exceeds 1.0SD. This implies that the variation in effects...

Bucky's Tuition Promise (BTP) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers generous financial aid to low-income, in-state students. Unlike many similar programs at other public universities, financial eligibility for BTP depends solely on a family's Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), rather than on...

We provide simple tests for selection on unobserved variables in the Vytlacil-Imbens-Angrist framework for Local Average Treatment Effects (LATEs). Our setup allows researchers not only to test for selection on either or both of the treated and untreated outcomes, but also to assess the...

This paper develops and applies semiparametric econometric methods to estimate the form of selection bias that arises from using nonexperimental comparison groups to evaluate social programs and to test the identifying assumptions that justify three widely-used classes of estimators and our...

We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort to examine mismatch between student ability and college quality. Mismatch has implications for the design of state higher education systems and for student aid policy. The data indicate substantial amounts of both undermatch (high...

This paper decomposes the participation process of a prototypical program into eligibility, awareness, application, acceptance and enrollment. With this decomposition, we determine the sources of unequal participation for different groups, and demonstrate that variables often have very different...

Recent tobacco regulations proposed by the Food and Drug Administration have raised a thorny question: how should the cost-benefit analysis accompanying such policies value foregone consumer surplus associated with regulation-induced reductions in smoking? In a model with rational and fully...

This paper examines the effect of the Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) system. This program 'profiles' UI claimants to determine their probability of benefit exhaustion (or expected spell duration) and then provides mandatory employment and training services to claimants with...

The key to estimating the impact of a program is constructing the counterfactual outcome representing what would have happened in its absence. This problem becomes more complicated when agents self-select into the program rather than being exogenously assigned to it. This paper uses data from a...