This paper compares the performance of popular estimators of teacher quality, which serve as inputs into teacher incentive schemes. I model an administrator tasked with categorizing teachers with respect to an exogenous cutoff showing that the preferred estimator depends on the relationship...

The model successfully fits key endogenous outcomes as observed in the data: 1) charter schools enter larger markets and markets where they would have higher per-pupil resources, 2) charter schools and public schools in markets in which charter schools are present both choose higher input levels...

Fifty two foster parents participated in one of seven offerings of a two-and-a-half hour training on the issue of children caught in a loyalty conflict. Prior to the training foster parents completed a measure of their demographics, receptivity to learning about the issue, and their knowledge...

A serious difficulty in determining the importance of credit constraints in education arises because standard data sources do not provide a direct way of identifying which students are credit constrained. This paper differentiates itself from previous work by taking a direct approach for...

We investigate the allocation of unemployed individuals to different subprograms within Swiss active labour market policy by the caseworkers at local employment offices in Switzerland in 1998. We are particularly interested in whether the caseworkers allocate the unemployed to services in ways...

Previous papers which examine the importance of peer effects using exogenous variation in college roommates have found only very limited evidence that a student’s first year grade performance is influenced by the observable academic characteristics of his/her roommate. One possible explanation...

Rising costs of and returns to college have led to sizeable increases in the demand for student loans in many countries. In the U.S., student loan default rates have also risen for recent cohorts as labor market uncertainty and debt levels have increased. We discuss these trends as well as...

We study the determinants of youth crime using a dynamic discrete choice model of crime and education. We allow past education and criminal activities to affect current crime and educational decisions. We take advantage of a rich panel dataset on serious juvenile offenders, the Pathways to...

In this paper, we explore the role of model uncertainty in explaining the different findings in the literature regarding the effect of shall-issue right-to-carry concealed weapons laws on crime. In particular, we systematically examine how different modeling assumptions affect the results. We...

We consider a general framework to study the evolution of wage and earnings residuals that incorporates features highlighted by two inf uential but distinct literatures in economics: (i) unobserved skills with changing non-linear pricing functions and (ii) idiosyncratic shocks with both...