During the last two decades, median instructional spending per full-time equivalent (FTE) student at American 4-year colleges and universities has grown at a slower rate than median spending per FTE student in a number of other expenditure categories including academic support, student services...

We present results from a randomized study of a well-defined use of computers in schools: a popular instructional computer program for pre-algebra and algebra. We assess the program using a test designed to target pre-algebra and algebra skills. Students randomly assigned to computer-aided...

Popular wisdom holds that publishers revise college textbooks mainly to kill off the secondary market for used books. While this behavior might be profitable if consumers are myopic, uninformed or have high short-run discount rates (that exceed the publishers'), neoclassical authors have noted...

This paper compares retrospective and prospective analyses of the effect of flip charts on test scores in rural Kenyan schools. Retrospective estimates that focus on subjects for which flip charts are used suggest that flip charts raise test scores by up to 20 percent of a standard deviation....

Information and communication technologies, such as laptops, can be used for educational purposes as they provide users with computational tools, information storage and communication opportunities, but these devices may also pose as distractors that may tamper with the learning process. This...

We study the causal effect of school curricula on students' stated beliefs and attitudes. We exploit a major textbook reform in China that was rolled out between 2004 and 2010 with the explicit intention of shaping youths' ideology. To measure its effect, we present evidence from a novel survey...

This paper utilizes a unique dataset collected through site visits to extend the analysis of the relationship between the human resource management environment and establishment performance to the service sector, specifically the branch operations of a large bank. Case studies of several...

We use the COVID shock to study the direct and interactive effects of several forms of corporate flexibility on short- and long-term real business plans. We find that i) workplace flexibility, namely the ability for employees to work remotely, plays a central role in determining firms'...

We study human capital reallocation following firm-specific idiosyncratic shocks. Theory offers diverging predictions as to whether human capital gets reallocated to its most productive use following these shocks. To empirically test these predictions, we focus on relegation battles in the...

We designed and fielded a survey of New York and Pennsylvania firms to study the impacts of New York's 2018 Paid Family Leave policy on employer outcomes. We match each NY firm to a comparable PA firm and use difference-in-difference models to analyze within-match-pair changes in outcomes. We...