This paper investigates how the precision and stability of a teacher's value-added estimate relates to the characteristics of the teacher's students. Using a large administrative data set and a variety of teacher value-added estimators, it finds that the stability over time of teacher...

We study the properties of two specification tests that have been applied to a variety of estimators in the context of value-added measures (VAMs) of teacher and school quality: the Hausman test for choosing between random and fixed effects and a test for feedback (sometimes called a...

School districts and state departments of education frequently must choose between a variety of methods to estimating teacher quality. This paper examines under what circumstances the decision between estimators of teacher quality is important. We examine estimates derived from growth percentile...

We investigate whether commonly used value-added estimation strategies can produce accurate estimates of teacher effects. We estimate teacher effects in simulated student achievement data sets that mimic plausible types of student grouping and teacher assignment scenarios. No one method...

When the running variable in a regression discontinuity (RD) design is measured with error, identification of the local average treatment effect of interest will typically fail. While the form of this measurement error varies across applications, in many cases the measurement error structure is...

We document two potential biases in recent analyses of UI benefit extensions using boundary-based identification: from using county-level aggregates and from across-border policy spillovers. To examine the first bias, we use a regression discontinuity (RD) approach that accounts for measurement...

In this paper we study the finite sample and asymptotic properties of various weighting estimators of the local average treatment effect (LATE), several of which are based on Abadie (2003)'s kappa theorem. Our framework presumes a binary endogenous explanatory variable ("treatment") and a binary...

We revisit the problem of estimating the local average treatment effect (LATE) and the local average treatment effect on the treated (LATT) when control variables are available, either to render the instrumental variable (IV) suitably exogenous or to improve precision. Unlike previous...

We revisit the problem of estimating the local average treatment effect (LATE) and the local average treatment effect on the treated (LATT) when control variables are available, either to render the instrumental variable (IV) suitably exogenous or to improve precision. Unlike previous...

We provide a systematic approach in obtaining an estimator asymptotically more efficient than the popular fixed effects Poisson (FEP) estimator for panel data models with multiplicative heterogeneity in the conditional mean. In particular, we derive the optimal instrumental variables under...