Despite tremendous recent interest in the subject of student debt by both researchers and policymakers, little is known about how the distribution of college graduate debt has been evolving and what factors can explain it. We use National Postsecondary Student Aid Study data from 1990 through...

Barnow, Trutko, and Piatak focus on whether persistent occupation-specific labor shortages might lead to inefficiencies in the U.S. economy. They describe why shortages arise, the difficulty in ascertaining that a shortage is present, and how to assess strategies to alleviate the shortage.

Maxwell extablishes the link between skills and low-skilled jobs and reveals the state of he labor market facing low-skilled workers.

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...

In order to study whether college scholarships can be an effective tool in raising students’ performance in secondary school, we use one aspect of the Kalamazoo Promise that resembles a quasi-experiment. The surprise announcement of the scholarship created a large change in expected college...

Wasem examines the impacts and implications of the Employment Act of 1946 and discusses how provisions of the Act might be useful for today's policymakers.