In this paper, we develop a model of technology adoption and economic growth in which households optimally obtain either a concept-based, general' education or a skill-specific, vocational' education. General education is more costly to obtain, but enables workers to operate new technologies...

This paper estimates the political and economic effects of the 19th century disenfranchisement of black citizens in the U.S. South. Using adjacent county-pairs that straddle state boundaries, I examine the effect of voting restrictions on political competition, public goods, and factor markets....

African-Americans entered the post-Civil War era with extremely low levels of exposure to schooling. Relying primarily on micro-level census data, we describe racial differences in literacy rates, school attendance, years of educational attainment, age-in-grade distributions, spending per pupil,...

The current high rates of return to human capital stimulate a supply response via increased investments in education and training. The so increased human capital stock exerts downward pressures on the rates of return that reduce the skill differential in wages. This paper reports estimates of:...

This paper estimates the effects of school quality - - measured by the pupil-teacher ratio, the average term length, and the relative pay of teachers -- on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949. Using earnings data from the 1980 Census, we find that men who were...

This paper examines the implications of tuition and need-based financial aid policies for family income - post-secondary (PS) attendance relationships. We first conduct a parallel empirical analysis of the effects of parental income on PS attendance for recent high school cohorts in both the...

While financial knowledge has been linked to improved financial behavior, there is little consensus on the value of financial education, in part because rigorous evaluation of various programs has yielded mixed results. However, given the heterogeneity of financial education programs in the...

Many economists and educators of diverse political beliefs favor public support for education on the premise that a more educated electorate enhances the quality of democracy. While some earlier studies document an association between schooling and citizenship, little attempt has been made to...

The expansion of U.S. universities after World War II gained from the arrival of immigrant scientists and graduate students, the broadening of access to universities, and the development of military research and high technology industry. Since the 1980s, however, growth of scientific research in...

The lawsuit Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard University provided an unprecedented look at how an elite school makes admissions decisions. Using publicly released reports, we examine the preferences Harvard gives for recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean's interest list, and...