Economics is among the most popular undergraduate majors. However, even at the best research universities and liberal arts colleges men outnumber women by two to one, and overall there are about 2.5 males to every female economics major. The Undergraduate Women in Economics (UWE) Challenge was...

We evaluate the labor-market returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification using state administrative data. We develop a fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) method to account for the fact that GED test takers can repeatedly retake the test until they pass it. Our technique can...

This paper estimates returns to education using a dynamic model of educational choice that synthesizes approaches in the structural dynamic discrete choice literature with approaches used in the reduced form treatment effect literature. It is an empirically robust middle ground between the two...

Student absences are a potentially important, yet understudied, input in the educational process. Using longitudinal data from a nationally-representative survey and rich administrative records from North Carolina, we investigate the relationship between student absences and academic...

When parents are more educated, their children tend to receive more schooling as well. Does this occur because parental ability is passed on genetically or because more educated parents provide a better environment for children to flourish? Using an intergenerational sample of families, we...

One would expect that family income is an important positive factor in the school attainment of children. However, evidence on this relationship is often tainted by the lack of control for parental ability, since at least a portion of ability is transferred genetically to children. This paper...