There is increased policy interest in extending the test-based evaluation framework in K-12 education to include student achievement in high school. High school achievement is typically measured by performance on end-of-course exams (EOCs), which test course-specific standards in subjects...

The specifics of how growth models should be constructed and used to evaluate schools and teachers is a topic of lively policy debate in states and school districts nationwide. In this paper we take up the question of model choice and examine three competing approaches. The first approach,...

This paper follows a cohort of initially high-performing Missouri students from grade-3 through grade-9 and examines whether attending a low-achieving school impacts their subsequent standardized exam scores, as well as the grade in which they first take Algebra I. Two key findings emerge....

It is widely known that standardized tests are noisy measures of student learning, but value added models (VAMs) rarely take direct account of measurement error in student test scores. We examine the extent to which modifying VAMs to include information about test measurement error (TME) can...

We show under very parsimonious assumptions that FGLS and GLS are asymptotically equivalent when errors follow an invertible MA(1) process. Although the linear regression model with MA errors has been studied for many years, asymptotic equivalence of FGLS and GLS has never been established for...

We investigate input pricing regimes that induce efficient make-or-buy decisions by entrants when there is constant returns in the production of the input(s) and simultaneous noncooperative price competition in downstream retail markets. A necessary and sufficient condition for efficient...

We show that the incentives a vertically integrated supplier may have to disadvantage or "sabotage" the activities of downstream rivals vary with both the type of sabotage and the nature of downstream competition. Cost-increasing sabotage is typically profitable under both Cournot and Bertrand...

Temporary Help Services (THS) employment has been growing in size, particularly among disadvantaged workers. An extended policy debate focuses on the low earnings, limited benefits, and insecurity that such jobs appear to provide. We investigate the earnings and wage differentials observed...

Although many programs redistribute resources in the U.S., two program were central in providing a safety net for those facing hardship during the Great Recession: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which grew to 47.7 million people in January 2013—or 15.1 percent of...

In this paper, we evaluate the labor-market returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification using Missouri 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....