In this paper we study the process of children's skill formation. The identification of this process is challenging because children's skills are observed only through arbitrarily scaled and imperfect measures. Using a dynamic la- tent factor structure, we provide new identification results...

A recent and growing area of research applies latent factor models to study the development of children's skills. Some normalization is required in these models because the latent variables have no natural units and no known location or scale. We show that the standard practice of...

A two-year randomized evaluation shows that the effectiveness of mobile mentors on schooling outcomes crucially depends on their training. While a standard training modality in highly marginalized communities in Mexico generates 0 results, enhanced training yields sizable treatment effects on...

A two-year randomized evaluation shows that the effectiveness of multi-tasking men- tors on schooling outcomes crucially depends on their training. While a standard training modality in highly marginalized communities in Mexico generates null results, enhanced training yields sizable treatment...

We develop a new estimator for the process of children's skill formation in which children's skills endogenously develop according to a dynamic latent factor structure. Rather than assuming skills are measured perfectly by a particular measure, we accommodate the variety of skills measures used...

A recent and growing area of research applies latent factor models to study the development of children's skills. Some normalization is required in these models because the latent variables have no natural units and no known location or scale. We show that the standard practice of...

This paper studies the mechanisms and the extent to which parental wage risk passes through to children's skill development. Through a quantitative dynamic labor supply model in which two parents choose whether to work short or long hours or not work at all, time spent with children, and...