We present results from a large-scale experimental evaluation of an ambitious attempt to improve management quality in Indian schools (implemented in 1,774 randomly-selected schools). The intervention featured several global “best practices” including comprehensive assessments, detailed...

Many factors including incentive-pay, powerful shareholders, and takeover threats push for-profits managers towards maximizing shareholder value. One of the most striking factors about non-profit firms is that they have no comparable governance institutions, and the only check on managers are...

Increasing evidence indicates the importance of management in determining firms' productivity. Yet, causal evidence regarding the effectiveness of management practices is scarce, especially for high-skilled workers in the developed world. In an eight-month field experiment measuring the...

We examine peer effects in early education by estimating value added models with school fixed effects that control extensively for individual, family, peer, and teacher characteristics to account for the endogeneity of peer group formation. We find statistically significant and robust spillover...

This paper summarizes and extends our recent work using life satisfaction regressions to estimate the relative values of financial and non-financial job characteristics. The well-being results show strikingly large values for non-financial job characteristics, especially workplace trust and...

The sustained rise in German unemployment since 1973 poses a problem of critical importance for the world economy. Fewer than two decades ago, Germany boasted an average unemployment rate of under 1% and imported labor to relieve chronic labor shortages. By the mid-1980s, unemployment had risen...

This paper empirically analyzes the Expectations Hypothesis (EH) in inflation-indexed (or real) bonds and in nominal bonds in the US and in the UK. We strongly reject the EH in inflation-indexed bonds, and also confirm and update the existing evidence rejecting the EH in nominal bonds. This...

In Fall 2009, officials from Chicago Public Schools changed their assignment mechanism for coveted spots at selective college preparatory high schools midstream. After asking about 14,000 applicants to submit their preferences for schools under one mechanism, the district asked them re-submit...