Using comprehensive administrative data on France's single largest financial aid program, this paper provides new evidence on the impact of large-scale need-based grant programs on the college enrollment decisions, persistence, and graduation rates of low-income students. We exploit sharp...

Computers are an important part of modern education, yet many schoolchildren lack access to a computer at home. We test whether this impedes educational achievement by conducting the largest-ever field experiment that randomly provides free home computers to students. Although computer ownership...

We examine the relative fortunes of the historically disadvantaged scheduled castes and tribes (SC/ST) in India in terms of their education attainment, occupation choices, consumption and wages. We study the period 1983-2005 using household survey data from successive rounds of the National...

Citizenship rights are associated with better economic opportunities for immigrants. This paper studies how in a country with a large fraction of temporary migrants the fertility decisions of foreign citizens respond to a change in the rules that regulate child legal status at birth. The...

This paper studies a possible market failure in the firm-based vocational training market: training may be too complex to be specified in a contract so that it is legally enforceable, resulting in the inability of firms to commit to training provision. We present a model of firm provided...

Large inflows of less educated immigrants may reduce wages paid to comparably-educated, native-born workers. However, if less educated foreign- and native-born workers specialize in different production tasks, because of different abilities, immigration will cause natives to reallocate their...

Using nationally representative data files from 1970s and 1990s college attendees, we find that in the 1970s matriculation at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) was associated with higher wages and an increased probability of graduation, relative to attending a traditionally...

This paper examines the importance of network-based intergenerational correlations in South Africa. I use longitudinal data on young South Africans to examine the covariance of children's employment with the usefulness of parents in their job search. I find that fathers serve as useful network...

Temporary-help jobs offer rapid entry into paid employment, but they are typically brief and it is unknown whether they foster longer term employment. We utilize the unique structure of Detroit's welfare-to- work program to identify the effect of temporary-help jobs on labor market advancement....

While nominal wage differences between skilled and unskilled workers have increased since 1980, college graduates have experienced larger increases in cost of living because they have increasingly concentrated in cities with high cost of housing. Using a city-specific CPI, I find that real wage...