For individuals who experience job loss, enrollment in post-secondary programs may provide an opportunity to improve future employment outcomes. However, decisions to enroll may be hampered by insufficient information about the benefits and costs and the necessary steps and assistance available...

We use survey data on an opt-in panel of around 2,500 US small businesses to assess the impact of COVID-19. We find a significant negative sales impact that peaked in Quarter 2 of 2020, with an average loss of 29% in sales. The large negative impact masks significant heterogeneity, with over 40%...

We estimate peer effects for fourth graders in six European countries. The identification relies on variation across classes within schools. We argue that classes within primary schools are formed roughly randomly with respect to family background. Similar to previous studies, we find sizeable...

This paper investigates how changing the length of the school year, leaving the basic curriculum unchanged, affects learning and subsequent earnings. I use variation introduced by the West-German short school years in 1966-67, which exposed some students to a total of about two thirds of a year...

Many theories of economic growth stress the role of human capital in the form of education, but empirical studies have been hampered by inadequate data. We describe a data set on educational attainment that we have constructed for 129 countries over five-year periods from 1960-1985. We use...

We analyze a large-scale survey of owners, managers, and employees of small businesses in the United States to understand the effects of the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic on those businesses. The survey was fielded in late April 2020 among Facebook business page administrators, frequent...

We study direct productivity changes and spillovers after a randomized training program for the frontline workers in a Colombian government agency. While trained workers improved their individual production, we also find substantial spillovers that affected managers' productivity. We use email...