We explore the effects of a statewide policy change that increased the number of high school math courses required for admission to any of North Carolina's 15 public four-year institutions. Using administrative data on cohorts of 8th grade students from 1999 to 2006, we document and exploit...

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education granted states the opportunity to apply for waivers from the core requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In exchange, states implemented systems of differentiated accountability in which they identified and intervened in their lowest-performing...

The private return to postsecondary investment varies widely by field, but the resources required by different fields are not well known. This paper establishes five new facts about college costs using novel department-level data. First, costs vary widely across field, ranging from electrical...

We study the evolution of a campus-based aid program for low-income students that began with grant-heavy financial aid and later added a suite of non-financial supports. We find little to no evidence that program eligibility during the early years (2004-2006), in which students received...

This paper examines the effect of marginal price on students' educational investments using rich administrative data on students at Michigan public universities. Students facing zero marginal price for credits above the full-time minimum (i.e., 12 credits) attempt and complete about the same...

This paper explores the promises and pitfalls of using National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data to measure a variety of postsecondary outcomes. We first describe the history of the NSC, the basic structure of its data, and recent research interest in using NSC data. Second, using information...

In this paper we consider possible links between the advent and diffusion of a number of new psychiatric pharmaceutical therapies and crime rates. We describe recent trends in crime and review the evidence showing mental illness as a clear risk factor both for criminal behavior and...

Does drug treatment for depression with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) increase or decrease the risk of completed suicide? The question is important in part because of recent government warnings that question the safety of SSRIs, one of the most widely prescribed medications in...

Since 2011, when the landmark “Dear Colleague” letter declared that the Department of Education (DoE) would use equal-access requirements of federal law to remediate sexual assault on college campuses, 458 investigations have been opened. This letter was withdrawn in 2017 and it remains...

We conduct the first-ever large-scale study of the relationship between air pollution and suicide using detailed cause of death data from all death certificates in the U.S. between 2003 and 2010. Using wind direction as an instrument for daily pollution exposure, we find that a 1 μg/m3 increase...