Lottery estimates suggest oversubscribed urban charter schools boost student achievement markedly. But these estimates needn’t capture treatment effects for students who haven’t applied to charter schools or for students attending charters for which demand is weak. This paper reports...

Individual outcomes are highly correlated with group average outcomes, a fact often interpreted as a causal peer effect. Without covariates, however, outcome-on-outcome peer effects are vacuous, either unity or, if the average is defined as leave-out, determined by a generic intraclass...

Why do individuals choose different types of post-secondary education, and what are the labor market consequences of those choices? We show that answering these questions is difficult because individuals choose between several unordered alternatives. Even with a valid instrument for every type...

We propose a generalization of the linear quantile regression model to accommodate possibilities afforded by panel data. Specifically, we extend the correlated random coefficients representation of linear quantile regression (e.g., Koenker, 2005; Section 2.6). We show that panel data allows the...

We present a methodology for estimating the distributional effects of an endogenous treatment that varies at the group level when there are group-level unobservables, a quantile extension of Hausman and Taylor (1981). Because of the presence of group-level unobservables, standard quantile...

This article evaluates a large collection of systemic risk measures based on their ability to predict macroeconomic downturns. We evaluate 19 measures of systemic risk in the US and Europe spanning several decades. We propose dimension reduction estimators for constructing systemic risk indexes...

This paper provides a systematic analysis of identification in linear social interactions models. This is both a theoretical and an econometric exercise as the analysis is linked to a rigorously delineated model of interdependent decisions. We develop an incomplete information game that...

An instrumental variables (IV) identification strategy that exploits statutory class size caps shows significant achievement gains in smaller classes in Italian primary schools. Gains from small classes are driven mainly by schools in Southern Italy, suggesting a substantial return to class size...

A recent literature has developed that combines two prominent empirical approaches to ex ante policy evaluation: randomized controlled trials (RCT) and structural estimation. The RCT provides a "gold-standard'' estimate of a particular treatment, but only of that treatment. Structural estimation...

I formalize a widely-used empirical model of network formation. The model allows for assortative matching on observables (homophily) as well as unobserved agent level heterogeneity in link surplus (degree heterogeneity). The joint distribution of observed and unobserved agent-level...