The nineteenth-century American family experienced tremendous demographic, economic, and institutional changes. By using birth order effects as a proxy for family environment, and linked census data on men born between 1835 and 1910, we study how the family's role in human capital production...

Mastery learning - the process by which students must demonstrate proficiency with a single topic before moving on - is well recognized as one of the most effective ways to learn, yet many teachers struggle or remain unsure about how to implement it into a classroom setting. This study evaluates...

The NBA provides an intriguing place to test for taste-based discrimination: referees and players are involved in repeated interactions in a high-pressure setting with referees making the type of split-second decisions that might allow implicit racial biases to manifest themselves. Moreover, the...

A number of recent studies show that males may increase their performance by more than females in response to competitive incentives. The literature suggests that such a male competitive advantage may contribute to observed gender gaps in the labor force pay and achievement. Understanding which...

The NBA provides an intriguing place to test for taste-based discrimination: referees and players are involved in repeated interactions in a high-pressure setting with referees making the type of split-second decisions that might allow implicit racial biases to manifest themselves. Moreover, the...

Using data on junior golf tournaments, we find evidence that the “hot hand” does exist, and that its prevalence decreases as golfers gain experience. This provides an explanation as to why studies that consider professional athletes conclude that the hot hand does not exist. We also show...

To investigate whether men and women respond differently to competition and whether this response depends on the gender mix of the group, the author examines outcomes of the Mellon Foundation's Graduate Education Initiative, a competitive fellowship program instituted in 1991 that was aimed at...

We examine the impact that medical research published in peer-reviewed journals has on the practice of medicine. We exploit the release of a recent New England Journal of Medicine article which demonstrated that the risks of attempting a vaginal birth after having a previous C-section birth...