The Gulf War provides an opportunity to estimate the effect of work-related separations on military families. Using data from the 1992 Survey of Officers and Enlisted Personnel, the authors estimate the effect of Gulf War deployment on divorce rates, spousal employment, and children's disability...

Most integration programs transfer students between schools within districts. In this paper, we study Metco, a long-running desegregation program that sends mostly Black students out of the Boston public school district to attend schools in more affluent suburban districts. Metco increases the...

The education reform movement includes efforts to raise teacher quality through stricter certification and licensing provisions. Most US states now require public school teachers to pass a standardized test such as the Praxis. Although any barrier to entry is likely to raise wages in the...

We develop semiparametric tests for conditional independence in time series models of causal effects. Our approach is motivated by empirical studies of monetary policy effects and is semiparametric in the sense that we model the process determining the distribution of treatment—the policy...

The veterans disability compensation (VDC) program, which provides a monthly stipend to disabled veterans, is the third largest American disability insurance program. Since the late 1990s, VDC growth has been driven primarily by an increase in claims from Vietnam veterans, raising concerns about...

We use student assignment lotteries to estimate the effect of charter school attendance on student achievement in Boston. We also evaluate a related alternative, Boston's pilot schools. Pilot schools have some of the independence of charter schools but are in the Boston Public School district...