Bartik provides evidence showing that investment in quality preschool education provides economic payoffs, particularly in lifetime earnings.

Recent studies have found a large earnings premium to attending a more selective college, but the mechanisms underlying this premium have received little attention and remain unclear. In order to shed light on this question, I develop a multidimensional signaling model relying on college grades...

This chapter is a draft of Chapter 7 of a planned book, Preschool and Jobs: Human Development as Economic Development, and Vice Versa. This book analyzes early childhood programs’ effects on regional economic development. Four early childhood programs are considered: 1) universally accessible...

This paper is a draft of Chapter 8 of a planned book, Preschool and Jobs: Human Development as Economic Development, and Vice Versa. This book analyzes early childhood programs’ effects on regional economic development. Four early childhood programs are considered: 1) universally accessible...

This paper estimates future adult earnings effects associated with a universal pre-K program in Tulsa, Oklahoma. These informed projections help to compensate for the lack of long-term data on universal pre-K programs, while using metrics that relate test scores to valued social benefits....

This paper examines the effects of preschool expansion in Kalamazoo County on the county’s economic development. Effects on the county’s economic development are defined as effects on the employment and earnings of county residents. The estimated effects are found to be large relative to the...

We use a regression-discontinuity design to study the effects of double blocking sixth-grade students in reading and mathematics on their achievement across three years of middle school. To identify the effect of the intervention, we use sharp cutoffs in the test scores used to assign students...

This paper uses a regression discontinuity model to examine the effects on kindergarten entrance assessments of the Kalamazoo County Ready 4s (KC Ready 4s) program, a half-day pre-K program for four-year-olds in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. The results are based on test scores and other...

While previous research has documented how the Kalamazoo Promise, the most prominent and generous place-based college scholarship program, increased enrollment in Kalamazoo Public Schools, this paper qualifies and quantifies the characteristics of students who were induced to enter—or...