We investigate short and long-term effects of early childhood education using variation created by a unique policy experiment in British Columbia, Canada. Our findings imply starting Kindergarten one year late substantially reduces the probability of repeating the third grade, and meaningfully...

"We investigate short and long-term effects of early childhood education using variation created by a unique policy experiment in British Columbia, Canada. Our findings imply starting Kindergarten one year late substantially reduces the probability of repeating the third grade, and meaningfully...

Despite a strong interest in entrepreneurship, economists have devoted little attention to the role of health insurance availability. I investigate the impact of a unique policy experiment - New Jersey’s Individual Health Coverage Plan - on self-employment. Implemented in August 1993, the IHCP...

We explore the effects of local ethnic and religious diversity on individual donations to private charities. Using 10-year neighborhood-level panels derived from personal tax records in Canada, we find that diversity has a detrimental effect on charitable donations. A 10 percentage point...

Many studies examine the importance of teachers in students' learning, but few exist on the contribution of principals. We measure the effect of principals on gains in primary test scores in North Carolina and estimate the standard deviation of principals' value added to be 0.12 -0.17. We find...