Even the most egalitarian education systems employ high-stakes tests to regulate the transition from universal secondary education to selective academic programs that open doors to skilled, well-paid professions. This gives parents a strong incentive to invest substantial resources in improving...

A commonly held perception is that an elite graduate degree can "scrub" a less prestigious but less costly undergraduate degree. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates from 2003 through 2017, this paper examines the relationship between the status of undergraduate degrees and...

A commonly held perception is that an elite graduate degree can "scrub" a less prestigious but less costly undergraduate degree. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates from 2003 through 2017, this paper examines the relationship between the status of undergraduate degrees and...

Even the most egalitarian education systems employ high-stakes tests to regulate the transition from universal secondary education to selective academic programs that open doors to skilled, well-paid professions. This gives parents a strong incentive to invest substantial resources in improving...

This paper investigates the wage returns to schooling and actual early work experiences, and how these returns have changed over the past twenty years. Using the NLSY surveys, we develop and estimate a dynamic model of the joint schooling and work decisions that young men make in early...

This paper investigates the wage returns to schooling and actual early work experiences, and how these returns have changed over the past twenty years. Using the NLSY surveys, we develop and estimate a dynamic model of the joint schooling and work decisions that young men make in early...

We study the impact of a student's ordinal rank in a high school cohort on educational attainment several years later. To identify a causal effect, we compare multiple cohorts within the same school, exploiting idiosyncratic variation in cohort composition. We find that a student's ordinal rank...