I conduct a statewide experiment in Michigan with nearly 50,000 high-achieving high school seniors. Treated students are mailed a letter encouraging them to consider college and providing them with the web address of a college information website. I find that very high-achieving, low-income students, and very high-achieving, minority students are…

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased accountability pressure in U.S. public schools by threatening to impose sanctions on Title-1 schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in consecutive years. Difference-in-difference estimates of the effect of failing AYP in the first year of NCLB on teacher effort in the…

More than 20 percent of all school-aged children in the United States have vision problems, and low-income and minority children are disproportionately likely to have unmet vision care needs. Vision screening is common in U.S. schools, but it remains an open question whether screening alone is sufficient to improve student outcomes. We implemented…

Housing choice vouchers provide low-income households with additional income to spend on rental housing in the private market. The assistance vouchers provide is substantial, offering the potential to dramatically expand the neighborhood--and associated public schools--that low-income households can reach. However, existing research on the program…

Using a rich data set of all SAT test takers from the 2004 through 2008 high school graduation cohorts, we investigate the impact of state-specific school age-of-entry laws on students' pathways into and through college. We document that these laws do not impact the probability that a student takes the SAT; however, we find strong evidence that…

A central question for environmental policy is whether the long-term benefits of energy-saving technologies are sufficient to justify their short-term costs, and if so, whether financial incentives are needed to stimulate adoption. The fiscal effects of incentivizing new technologies, and the revenue effects of using the technology, are also…

This paper estimates risk reductions for each layer of security designed to prevent commercial passenger airliners from being commandeered by terrorists, kept under control for some time, and then crashed into specific targets. Probabilistic methods are used to characterize the uncertainty of rates of deterrence, detection, and disruption, as well…

This study capitalizes on a natural experiment that occurred in California between 2000 and 2002. In those years, the state offered a competitively allocated $20,000 incentive called the Governor's Teaching Fellowship (GTF) aimed at attracting academically talented, novice teachers to low-performing schools and retaining them in those schools for…

School vouchers are the most contentious form of parental school choice. Vouchers provide government funds that parents can use to send their children to private schools of their choice. Here we examine the empirical question of whether or not a school voucher program in Washington, DC, affected achievement or the rate of high school graduation…

This paper reviews the literature on poverty dynamics in the U.S. It surveys the most prevalent data, theories, and methods used to answer three key questions: How likely are people to enter, exit, and reenter poverty? How long do people remain in poverty? And what events are associated with entering and exiting poverty? The paper then analyzes…

About 75 percent of U.S.-trained, noncitizen PhDs in science and engineering work in the United States after graduation, and 54 percent of those who stay take postdoctoral positions. The probability of postdoctoral participation is substantially higher for temporary visa holders than for permanent visa holders because of visa-related restrictions…

This paper examines the impact of living in ethnic enclaves in different parts of a metropolitan area on low-skilled Latino immigrants' employment accessibility. It does so by comparing the employment status and commuting times of Latinos living in and out of ethnic neighborhoods in central city, inner-ring suburbs, and outer-ring suburbs in…

Using data on approximately 2,000 low-income welfare recipients in a three-site random-assignment intervention conducted in the early 1990s (the NEWWS), we examine the role of cognitive and non-cognitive factors in moderating experimental impacts of an adult education training program for women who lacked a high school degree or GED at the time of…

Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) is an agenda-based theory that offers a theoretical foundation for large budget shifts. PET emphasizes that the static, incremental nature of agendas is occasionally interrupted by punctuations. These punctuations indicate shifts in priority among the agenda items, and with those agenda shifts come trade-offs.…

Facilities that self-police under the Environmental Protection Agency's Audit Policy are eligible for reduced penalties on disclosed violations. This paper investigates whether self-policing has additional consequences; in particular, whether self-policing reduces future enforcement activity. Using data on U.S. hazardous waste enforcement and…