Significant numbers of people have very low levels of literacy in many OECD countries and, because of this, face significant labour market penalties. Despite this, it remains unclear what teaching strategies are most useful for actually rectifying literacy deficiencies. The subject remains...

We use standardized end-of-course knowledge assessments to examine student learning during the disruptions induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining seven economics courses taught at four US R1 institutions, we find that students performed substantially worse, on average, in Spring 2020 when...

Teachers often deliver the same lesson multiple times in one day. In contrast to year-to-year teaching experience, it is unclear how this teaching repetition affects student outcomes. We examine the effects of teaching repetition in a setting where students are randomly assigned to a university...

This work contributes to the literature raising concerns with the use of SET (student teaching evaluation) scores to evaluate teaching effectiveness and to motivate or demotivate faculty tenure and promotion decisions. It shows that the non-deterministic and qualitative nature of the SETs...

Using data on 24 teachers and 982 students from a 2006 survey of California high school economics classes, we assess the effects of student and teacher characteristics on student achievement. We estimate value-added models of outcomes on multiple choice and essay exams, with matched classroom...

Random effects estimates using panel data for 42 colleges and universities over 16 years reveal that the economics faculty size of universities offering a Ph.D. in economics is determined primarily by the long-run average number of Ph.D. degrees awarded annually; the number of full-time faculty...

This paper analyses the determinants of grades achieved in three core subjects by first-year Economics undergraduate students at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, over the period 2001-2005. Gender, nationality, type of school, specialization track at high school and the grades at the university...

A substantial body of research suggests that economists are less generous than other professionals and that economics students are less generous than other students. We address this question using administrative data on donations to social programs by students at the University of Washington....

This study investigates how being exposed to a field of study influences students' major choices. We exploit a natural experiment at a Swiss university where all first-year students face largely the same curriculum before they choose a major. An important component of the first-year curriculum...

Many studies examine the importance of teachers in students' learning, but few exist on the contribution of principals. We measure the effect of principals on gains in primary test scores in North Carolina and estimate the standard deviation of principals' value added to be 0.12 -0.17. We find...