This paper studies the causal impacts of public universities on the outcomes of their marginally admitted students. I use administrative admission records spanning all 35 public universities in Texas, which collectively enroll 10 percent of American public university students, to systematically...

Since the spring of 2021, nearly 700 colleges and universities in the U.S. have mandated that their students become vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. We leverage rich data on colleges' vaccination policies and semester start dates, along with a variety of county-level public health...

A fundamental question for education policy is whether outcomes-based accountability including comprehensive educator evaluations and a closer relationship between effectiveness and compensation improves the quality of instruction and raises achievement. We use synthetic control methods to study...

School assignment policies are a key lever to increase access to high performing schools and to promote racial and socioeconomic integration. For over 50 years, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) has bussed students of color from Boston, Massachusetts to relatively...

We examine the effect of enforcing minimum quality standards (MQSs) on consumer health. In the late 1800s, the urban milk supply was regularly skimmed and diluted with water, but consumers could not easily determine its quality because dyes, caramel, and salt were added. To protect consumers,...

Policy makers periodically consider using student assignment policies to improve educational outcomes by altering the socio-economic and academic skill composition of schools. We exploit the quasi-random reassignment of students across schools in the Wake County Public School System to estimate...

We provide the first evidence on the disenrollment impacts of SNAP's General Work Requirements, which apply to 28% of SNAP households, including many with young children. We leverage a regression discontinuity design based on the age of the youngest child in the household relative to the date of...

Using data on U.S. state and federal taxes and transfers over a quarter century, we estimate a regression model that yields the marginal effect of any shift of market income share from one quintile to another on the entire post tax, post-transfer income distribution. We identify exogenous income...

Evidence on cannabis legalization's effects on mental health remains scarce, despite both rapid increases in cannabis use and an ongoing mental health crisis in the United States. We use granular geographic data to estimate medical cannabis dispensary availability's effects on self-reported...

Distribution choices by individuals retiring from CalSTRS are examined for participants that retired between 2016 and 2023. Women are much more likely to select a member-only annuity while a larger proportion of men select a J&S annuity that provide survivor benefits. Being married is a dominant...