We evaluate the effects of high school exit exams on high school graduation, incarceration, employment and wages. We construct a state/graduation-cohort dataset using the Current Population Survey, Census and information on exit exams. We find relatively modest effects of high school exit exams...

Although both economists and psychometricians typically treat them as interval scales, test scores are reported using ordinal scales. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study and the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey, we examine the effect of order-preserving scale transformations...

We address the ordinality of test scores by rescaling them by the average eventual educational attainment of students with a given test score in a given grade. We show that measurement error in test scores causes this approach to underestimate the black-white test score gap and use an...

Partly in response to increased testing and accountability, states and districts have been raising the minimum school entry age, but existing studies show mixed results regarding the effects of entry age. These studies may be severely biased because they violate the monotonicity assumption...

The 1994 Federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) provided more than $1.5 billion over five years to support increased career preparation activities in the country's public schools. However, the STWOA was not re-authorized, so state governments face decisions about levels of funding...

This paper tests whether school-to-work (STW) programs are particularly beneficial for those less likely to go to college in their absence%u2014%u2014often termed the %u201C%u201Cforgotten half%u201D%u201D in the STW literature. The empirical analysis is based on the NLSY97, which allows us to...

This paper reports on a small-scale audit study that investigates sex discrimination in restaurant hiring. Comparably matched pairs of men and women applied for jobs as waiters and waitresses at 65 restaurants in Philadelphia. The 130 applications led to 54 interviews and 39 job offers. The...

We use a unique new data set that combines individual worker data with data on workers' employers to estimate plant-level production functions and wage equations, and thus to compare relative marginal products and relative wages for various groups of workers. The data and empirical framework...

Theory predicts that minimum wages will reduce employer-provided on-the-job training designed to improve workers' skills on the current job, but may increase the amount of training that workers obtain to qualify for a job. We estimate the effects of minimum wages on the amount of both types of...

This paper examines the consequences of initial periods of churning,' floundering about,' or mobility' in the labor market to help assess whether faster transitions to stable employment relationships--such as those envisioned by advocates of school-to-work programs--would be likely to lead to...