Recruiting female teachers is frequently suggested as a policy option for improving girls' education outcomes in developing countries, but there is surprisingly little evidence on the effectiveness of such a policy. We study gender gaps in learning outcomes, and the effectiveness of female...

We present experimental evidence on the impact of a school choice program in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) that provided students with a voucher to finance attending a private school of their choice. The study design featured a unique two-stage lottery-based allocation of vouchers that...

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) have been shown to increase human capital investments, but their standard features make them expensive. We use a large randomized experiment in Morocco to estimate an alternative government-run program, a "labeled cash transfer" (LCT): a small cash transfer made...

We conduct a randomized controlled trial of an Indian school library program. Overall, the program had no impact on students' scores on a language skills test administered after 16 months. The estimates are sufficiently precise to rule out effects larger than 0.053 and 0.037 standard deviations,...

Banking reforms--that reduced interest rates--boosted college enrollment rates among able students from middle class families. We define "able" students as those with learning aptitude scores in the top two-thirds of the U.S. population. We define "middle class" as families in which both parents...

Performance pay for teachers is frequently suggested as a way of improving education outcomes in schools, but the theoretical predictions regarding its effectiveness are ambiguous and the empirical evidence to date is limited and mixed. We present results from a randomized evaluation of a...

We propose a simple nonparametric mixtures estimator for recovering the joint distribution of parameter heterogeneity in economic models, such as the random coefficients logit. The estimator is based on linear regression subject to linear inequality constraints, and is robust, easy to program...

We report results from a randomized evaluation of a merit scholarship program for adolescent girls in Kenya. Girls who scored well on academic exams had their school fees paid and received a cash grant for school supplies. Girls eligible for the scholarship showed significant gains in academic...

We construct a new nationally-representative panel dataset of schools across 1297 villages in India and find that the large investments in public primary education over the past decade have led to substantial improvements in input-based measures of school quality, including infrastructure,...

We study the impact of an innovative program in the Indian state of Bihar that aimed to reduce the gender gap in secondary school enrollment by providing girls who continued to secondary school with a bicycle that would improve access to school. Using data from a large representative household...