Teacher professional development (PD) is among the most prominent levers used to improve teaching quality. The findings of research studies examining PD interventions are heterogeneous, with meta-analyses indicating mean positive impacts but also the existence of many ineffective programs. "Educational Researcher" has served as a…

"Campus Economics" provides college and university administrators, trustees, and faculty with an essential understanding of how college finances actually work. Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson explain the concepts needed to analyze the pros, the cons, and the trade-offs of difficult decisions, and offer a common language for discussing…

In this paper, which draws on two years of qualitative research, I examine the ways in which refugees are positioned and position themselves in job training programs and in their initial US jobs. I provide examples of how 'factishes', a combination of facts and fetishes, are fabricated and position the refugees, and those working with them, in…

This dissertation is comprised of two chapters regarding the economics of post-secondary education. The first concerns effects of peer gender: Large gender differences exist in the take-up and completion of college majors across academic fields. The degree of gender concentration within fields tends to increase over time spent in college. In this…

Educational leadership has become a prime focus in the past few decades. Margaret Stuart's thesis is that, as the New Zealand education reforms of the 1990s were bundled with neoliberal economics, the discourse of educational leadership ascended. The country is unique in that its devolution of educational management to individual schools, and an…

This dissertation presents evidence about implementing a free college policy on higher education's demand and supply. This analysis includes descriptive evidence about the impact of the policy on students and programs' behavior. It also develops and estimates a demand and supply model of higher education that provides a framework to analyze the…

In this dissertation I use modern microeconomic methods to examine the impact of K-12 education policy interventions on student outcomes. In the first chapter I explore how increased funding for school policing and sentiment surrounding school policing can have downstream effects on student discipline, and how these effects vary by student and…

Chapter 1 is The Effect of Honors College Participation on Student Outcomes. Honors education refers to programs for high achieving students at U.S. post-secondary institutions. These programs provide high achieving students benefits such as the ability to enroll in exclusive courses with small class sizes, to live in special dorms, and to enroll…

An extensive literature documents the instrumental role of early childhood in improving individuals' life chances. This dissertation consists of three connected chapters that study the effects of early childhood circumstances on human capital formation and its economic consequences. The first chapter examines the impact of family size on…

In this dissertation, I use data from Chile to study the determinants of schooling trajectories. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on higher education, Chapter 3 on secondary education, and Chapter 4 on teachers. Chapter 1 explores the role of a socio-emotional ability, self-efficacy, in understanding why students with comparable qualifications transit…

This dissertation is a collection of three essays in Public Economics. The first chapter studies the optimal design of student loans as a lever to foster the inclusion of poor students in private colleges in Brazil. The second chapter delves into understanding the consequences of affirmative action as a tool to increase the participation of…

Using individual data from PIAAC and aggregate data on GDP and unemployment for the US, Europe, and Spain, we test how macroeconomic conditions experienced at age eighteen affect the following decisions in post-secondary and tertiary education: (1) enrollment; (2) dropping-out; (3) type of degree completed; (4) area of specialization; and (5)…

This article aims to identify the level of incidence of social and economic variables on education, considering the existence of a cumulative circular causation, in order to point out public policy recommendations to improve people's well-being and thus increase Indicators of development, especially in educational matters. An econometric analysis…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to verify the developed hypothesis on the basis of comparison of remote education and traditional education in terms of its effectiveness at the micro-level, as well as to determine the presence, degree and nature of correlation between the share of remote education and level of development of economic systems…

The dissertation comprises of two chapters that use applied econometric techniques to analyze policy related questions that have implications for educational outcomes and one chapter that assesses factors that influence foreign direct investment inflows. In the first chapter I study the impact of equity premiums on the completion numbers of…