Disparities in cognition persist between non-Hispanic Black (hereafter, Black) and non-Hispanic White (hereafter, White) older adults, and are possibly influenced by early educational differences stemming from structural racism. However, the relationship between school racial segregation and...

This research investigates why some women like STEM occupations more than others. We show that this phenomenon is rooted in historical kin-based norms and specific aspects of cognition, perceptions, and aspirations enforced by the normative demands of ancestral societies. Using a sub-population...

This paper investigates the impact of attending early childcare on second generation immigrant children's cognitive outcomes. Our analysis draws on administrative data on the entire population of students in fifth grade collected by the Italian Institute for the Evaluation of the Educational...

Despite extensive literature on peer effects, the role of peers on personality skill development remains poorly understood. We fill this gap by investigating the effects of having disadvantaged primary school peers, generated by random classroom assignment and parental migration for employment....

While it is well known that there are systematic birth order effects on life cycle outcomes, there is less consensus about underlying channels and mechanisms of birth order effects. We ftnd negative birth order effects among Chinese adolescents, favoring earlier-born children within household in...

We exploit the variation in admission cutoffs across colleges at a leading Indian university to estimate the causal effects of enrolling in a selective college on cognitive attainment, economic preferences, and Big Five personality traits. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that...

Non-cognitive abilities are supposed to affect student's educational performance, who are challenged by parental expectations and norms. Parental gender stereotypes are shown to strongly decrease student wellbeing in China. Students are strongly more depressed, feeling blue, unhappy, not...

Cognitive functioning is critical as in our daily life a host of real-world complex decisions in highstakes markets have to be made. The decision-making process can be vulnerable to environmental stressors. Summarizing the growing economic and epidemiologic evidence linking air pollution,...

We present experimental evidence on the impact of delivering double-fortified salt (DFS), salt fortified with iron and iodine, through the Indian school-feeding program called "mid-day meal" on anemia, cognition, and math and reading scores of primary school children. We conducted a field...

While there is a large body of literature on the negative health effects of air pollution, there is much less written about its effects on cognitive performance for the whole population. This paper studies the effects of contemporaneous and cumulative exposure to air pollution on cognitive...