This paper studies how different demographic groups respond to incentives by comparing performance in the GRE examination in "high" and "low" stakes situations. The high stakes situation is the real GRE examination and the low stakes situation is a voluntary experimental section of the GRE that...

Across the United States, there is a dearth of women, underrepresented racial minority (URM), and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and many other terms (LGBTQIA+) community members in STEM-oriented academic majors and careers. While prior research has tended to...

This paper uses a college-by-graduate degree fixed effects estimator to evaluate the returns to 19 different graduate degrees for men and women. We find substantial variation across degrees, and evidence that OLS overestimates the returns to degrees with high average earnings and underestimates...

Using birth certificates matched to schooling records for Florida children born 1992 - 2002, we assess whether family disadvantage disproportionately impedes the pre-market development of boys. We find that, relative to their sisters, boys born to disadvantaged families have higher rates of...

Recent work suggests that women are more responsive to negative feedback than men in certain environments. We examine whether negative feedback in the form of relatively low grades in major-related classes explains gender differences in the final majors undergraduates choose. We use unique...

The federal government and many individual organizations have invested in programs to support diversity in the STEM pipeline, including STEM summer programs for high school students, but there is little rigorous evidence of their efficacy. We fielded a randomized controlled trial to study a...

"There are various reasons why less-educated men have higher risks of labor market vulnerability - risks such as being unemployed or, if employed, having only low socioeconomic status. The commonly used argument is that these higher risks result from increased job competition caused by an...

This study of the emergence of inequality during the early years is based upon a comparative analysis of children at the age of about five years in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. We study a series of child outcomes related to readiness to learn, focusing on...

There are various reasons why less-educated men have higher risks of labor market vulnerability - risks such as being unemployed or, if employed, having only low socioeconomic status. The commonly used argument is that these higher risks result from increased job competition caused by an...

We study the evolution of educational attainment of the 1932-1972 cohorts using a human capital investment model with heterogeneous learning ability. Inter-cohort variation in schooling is driven by changes in skill prices, tuition, and education quality over time, and average learning ability...