This paper poses the following question in the context of civil rights in education — is proportionality synonymous with parity? Since 1974 the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has determined that in order for an educational institution to be in compliance with Title IX of the Educational...

Can high-dosage tutoring help low-performing adolescents? We implement a randomized experiment to test a twofold intervention: A teacher training program customized for instructing 8th graders who perform poorly in mathematics and two 4-6 week periods of targeted math instruction for...

We construct a new dataset of inequality in educational attainment by age and sex at the global level. The comparison of education inequality measures across age groups allows us to assess the effect of inter-generational education attainment trends on economic growth. Our results indicate that...

Looking at the decentralized provision of public education in a middle-income country, this paper estimates the impact of local autonomy on service quality, finding large heterogeneity in the effect across different levels of local development. In the year 2002, Colombian municipalities were...

This paper introduces Parameter Estimation by Raw Moments (PERM), a flexible method for evaluating a policy's impact on the parameters of an outcome distribution. Such parameters include the variance (E[Y 2 ]−E[Y] 2 ), skewness and covariance of two outcomes. PERM simplifies distributional...

This paper develops a dynamic model of schooling and occupational choices that incorporates personality traits, as measured by the so-called “big five” traits. The model is estimated using the HILDA dataset from Australia. Personality traits are found to play an important role in explaining...

Banking reforms — that reduced interest rates — boosted college enrollment rates among able students from middle class families. We define “able” students as those with learning aptitude scores in the top two-thirds of the U.S. population. We define “middle class” as families in...

This paper examines how skills are shaped by social interactions in families. We show that older siblings causally affect younger sibling's education choices and early career earnings. We focus on critical course choices in high school and overcome the identification challenges of estimating...

Can surveys affect human capital investments? This paper examines whether individual education choices and outcomes are affected by a survey posing questions related to investments, performance, preferences, and expectations. We have administrative data for the whole Swedish population to which...