This paper examines the financial value over the course of a lifetime of pursuing a college degree under a variety of different settings (e.g. major, student loan debt, individual ability). Using a lifecycle simulation approach, I account for ability/selection bias and the substantial...

This paper examines the potential costs and benefits associated with a risk-sharing policy imposed on all higher education institutions. Under such a program, institutions would be required to pay for a portion of the student loans among which their students defaulted. I examine the predicted...

Using a dynamic labor supply model and linked employer-employee data, I find evidence of substantial search frictions, with females facing a higher level of frictions than males. However, the majority of the gender gap in labor supply elasticities is driven by across firm sorting rather than...

Using linked employer-employee data, I compute firm-level measures of the labor supply elasticity facing each private non-farm firm in the US. I provide the first direct evidence of the positive relationship between a firm's labor supply elasticity and the earnings of its workers. I also...

Median instructional spending per full-time equivalent (FTE) student at American colleges and universities has grown at a slower rate the median spending per FTE in a number of other expenditure categories during the last two decades. We use institutional level panel data and a variety of...

We estimate the returns to college using administrative data on college enrollment matched to administrative data on weekly earnings. Utilizing the fact that colleges dismiss low-performing students based on exact GPA cutoffs, we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the earnings...

Using within-high-school variation and controlling for a measure of cognitive ability, this paper finds that high-school leadership experiences explain a significant portion of the residual gender wage gap and selection into management occupations. Our results imply that high-school leadership...

By 2010, the average US state had passed 37 health insurance benefit mandates (laws requiring health insurance plans to cover certain additional services). Previous work has shown that these mandates likely increase health insurance premiums, which in turn could make it more costly for firms to...

Using linked employer-employee data which covers the majority of U.S. employment, I examine how frictions in the labor market have evolved over time. I estimate that the labor supply elasticity to the firm declined by approximately 0.19 log points (1.20 to 1.01) since the late 1990's, with the...

Analyzing how working students weather personal economic shocks is increasingly important as the fraction of college students working substantial hours has increased dramatically over the past few decades. Using administrative data on Ohio college students linked to matched firm-worker data on...