I use a structural matching model, North Carolina public school data, and a survey of teachers’ career plans to analyze schools’ and teachers’ behaviors in the teacher transfer market. Results show that mid-career teachers with better pre-service qualifications are the most eager to...

We develop and estimate a one-shot search model with endogenous firm entry, and therefore zero expected profits, and endogenous labor supply. Positive employment effects from a minimum wage increase can result as the employment level depends upon both the numbers of searching firms and workers....

Teacher effort, a critical component of education production, has been understudied in the literature because of measurement difficulties. I use a principal-agent model, North Carolina data, and the state’s accountability system that awards cash for school-level academic growth to distill...

In 2006, North Carolina put in place high school exit standards requiring students to pass a series of high-stakes exams across several years. I use a regression discontinuity (RD) approach to analyze whether passing or failing one of these exams (Algebra I) impacts a student's decision between...

White teenagers are substantially more likely to search for employment than black teenagers. This differential occurs despite the fact that, conditional on race, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to search. While the racial wage gap is small, the unemployment rate for...

I develop a model of ability sorting of low-wage workers across multiple markets when one market substantially increases its wage floor using a living wage. The wage floor increase can increase or decrease employment probabilities in both covered and uncovered markets.