There is growing concern that it is too difficult or costly to substantially improve the academic skills of children who are behind in school once they reach adolescence. But perhaps what we have tried in the past relies on the wrong interventions, failing to account for challenges like the...

Do men negatively respond when women first enter an occupation? We answer this question by studying the end of one of the final explicit occupational barriers to women in the U.S.: in 2016, the U.S. military opened all positions to women, including historically male-only combat occupations. We...

Army cadets obtain occupations through a centralized process. Three objectives - increasing retention, aligning talent, and enhancing trust - have guided reforms to this process since 2006. West Point's mechanism for the Class of 2020 exacerbated challenges implementing Army policy aims. We...

This paper estimates the value of a statistical life (VSL), or the willingness to trade-off wealth and mortality risk, among 430,000 U.S. Army soldiers choosing whether to reenlist between 2002 and 2010. Using a discrete choice random utility approach and significant variation in retention...

This paper estimates causal intergenerational occupation transmission in the military using discontinuities in parents' eligibility for service from the Armed Forces Qualification Test. A parent's enlistment in the Army increases their children's military service propensity by between 58% and...

We explore how much borrowers value student debt relief, in the setting of the federal Teacher Loan Forgiveness (TLF) program, and further document whether information and eligibility for this program affect teacher employment decisions. The program cancels between $5,000 and $17,500 in debt for...

We estimate the extensive and intensive margin labor supply response to the monthly Child Tax Credit disbursed in 2021 as a part of the American Rescue Plan Act. Using Current Population Survey microdata, we compare labor supply outcomes among households who qualify for varying relative...

We study habit formation in annual biometric health screenings using a field experiment that randomly assigned financial incentives to 4,799 employees over three years. Completing the first screening raised subsequent screenings by 32.4-36.0 percentage points (84%-90%) annually. Habit formation...