Although most U.S. institutions of higher education now make appreciable use of work-based learning options, their attention to experiential education as a learning vehicle is relatively limited. The connection between the work experience and the on-campus curriculum is only loosely formed, and...

Non-financial barriers to college are an important possible explanation for socioeconomic, racial, gender, and other gaps in college access and success. A sizeable economic literature documents policy efforts to understand and address these barriers. We review this literature on non-financial...

A growing literature establishes that high quality early childhood interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have substantial impacts on later life outcomes. Little is known about the mechanisms producing these impacts. This paper uses longitudinal data on cognitive and personality...

We measure the effect of district use of federal pandemic relief during the 2022-23 school year for a sample of more than 5000 districts in 29 states. We rely on several plausibly exogenous sources of variation in federal grants: differences in state Title I funding formulas, estimation error in...

This paper analyzes the non-market benefits of education and ability. Using a dynamic model of educational choice we estimate returns to education that account for selection bias and sorting on gains. We investigate a range of non-market outcomes including incarceration, mental health, voter...

Using linked records from the 1880 to 1940 full-count United States decennial censuses, we estimate the effects of parental exposure to compulsory schooling (CS) laws on the human capital outcomes of children, exploiting the staggered roll-out of state CS laws in the late nineteenth and early...

Using linked records from the 1880 to 1940 full-count United States decennial censuses, we estimate the effects of parental exposure to compulsory schooling (CS) laws on the human capital outcomes of children, exploiting the staggered roll-out of state CS laws in the late nineteenth and early...

We estimate the intergenerational effects of compulsory schooling (CS) laws in the United States (1875 to 1940), exploiting the staggered roll-out of state CS laws and using difference-in-differences and instrumental variable (IV) approaches in a linked panel of full-count US census data....

We study the impacts of WWII service and access to GI Bill benefits on the educational and labor market outcomes of individuals of various ethnic and racial groups. We address selection into military service directly by linking veterans and nonveterans from 1950's census records to the...