Using the Beginning Postsecondary Student Survey, we examine the effect on earnings of obtaining certificates/degrees from for-profit, not-for-profit, and public institutions. Students who enter certificate programs at any type of institution do not gain from earning a certificate. However,...

Using data from three cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth, we investigate whether there were adverse consequences of teenage childbearing in the 1950s and 1960s, when most abortions were illegal, and access to the pill was limited. We find negative effects of teen motherhood on the...

I study whether human capital investments are based on local rather than national demand, and whether this is explained by migration or information frictions. I analyze three sector-specific shocks with differential local effects, including the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and a...

I analyze whether reducing geographic distance to high-wage jobs increases access to those employment opportunities. I collect office locations and campus recruiting strategies for over 70 prestigious banking and consulting firms, from 2000 to 2013. Using an event-study framework, I find firms...

African Americans face shorter employment durations than apparently similar whites. We hypothesize that employers discriminate in either acquiring or acting on ability-relevant information. We construct a model in which firms may "monitor" workers. Monitoring black but not white workers is...

We show that in labor market models with adverse selection, otherwise observationally equivalent workers will experience less wage growth following a period in which they change jobs than following a period in which they do not. We find little or no evidence to support this prediction. In most...