The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruption in schooling in the U.S., and student test scores showed dramatic declines by the end of the 2020-21 school year. We use state test score data to analyze patterns of test score recovery over the 2021-22 school year. On average, we find that 20%...

This paper examines variations in stature and the Body Mass Index (BMI) across space for the United States in 1917/18, using published data on the measurement of approximately 890,000 recruits for the American Army for World War I. It also connects those anthropometric measurements with an index...

This paper briefly reviews the literature on the evolution of approaches to living standards and then applies the methodology discussed for stature to the United States from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries. Part I of the paper emphasizes two major strands of the subject:...

Thanks to extraordinary and exponential improvements in data storage and computing capacities, it is now possible to collect, manage, and analyze data in magnitudes and in manners that would have been inconceivable just a short time ago. As the world has developed this remarkable capacity to...

Peer effects are potentially important for understanding the optimal organization of schools, jobs, and neighborhoods, but finding evidence is difficult because people are selected into peer groups based, in part, on their unobservable characteristics. I identify the effects of peers whom a...

The recent federal education bill, No Child Left Behind, requires states to test students in grades three to eight each year, and to judge school performance on the basis of these test scores. While intended to maximize student learning, there is little empirical evidence about the effectiveness...

Critics of international student comparisons argue that results may be influenced by differences in the extent to which countries adequately sample their entire student populations. In this research note, we show that larger exclusion and non-response rates are related to better country average...

PISA is seen as the gold standard for evaluating educational outcomes worldwide. Yet, being a low-stakes exam, students may not take it seriously resulting in downward biased scores and inaccurate rankings. This paper provides a method to identify and account for non-serious behavior in...

This paper examines whether the Solow growth model is consistent with the international variation in the standard of living. It shows that an augmented Solow model that includes accumulation of human as well as physical capital provides an excellent description of the cross-country data. The...

We define and estimate measures of economic preparation for retirement based on a complete inventory of economic resources while taking into account the risk of living to advanced old age and the risk of high out-of-pocket spending for health care services. We ask whether, in a sample of 66-69...