Hurricane Katrina displaced approximately 650,000 people and destroyed or severely damaged 217,000 homes along the Gulf Coast. Damage was especially severe in New Orleans, and the return of displaced residents to this city has been slow. The fraction of households receiving mail (which, in the...

Hurricane Katrina displaced approximately 650,000 people and destroyed or severely damaged 217,000 homes along the Gulf Coast. Damage was especially severe in New Orleans, and the return of displaced residents to this city has been slow. The fraction of households receiving mail (which, in the...

While numerous recent authors have studied the effects of school accountability systems on student test performance and school “gaming” of accountability incentives, there has been little attention paid to substantive changes in instructional policies and practices resulting from school...

In CPS data, the 20% of the civilian labor force with 1-3 years of college earn 15% more than high school graduates. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of1972 which includes postsecondary transcript data and the NLSY to study the distinct returns to 2-year...

In this article, we review the empirical evidence on the impact of education vouchers on student achievement, and briefly discuss the evidence from other forms of school choice. The best research to date finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered education vouchers, most of...

Because a significant portion of U.S. students lacks critical mathematic skills, schools across the country are investing heavily in computerized curriculums as a way to enhance education output, even though there is surprisingly little evidence that they actually improve student achievement. In...

We evaluate the effect of performance-based incentive programs on educational outcomes for community college students from a random assignment experiment at three campuses. Incentive payments over two semesters were tied to meeting two conditions-enrolling at least half time and maintaining a C...

Using survey data from a field experiment in the U.S., we test whether and how financial incentives change student behavior. We find that providing post-secondary scholarships with incentives to meet performance, enrollment, and/or attendance benchmarks induced students to devote more time to...

Abstract During the 1990s economic expansion, the United States enjoyed both low inflation and low unemployment. Juhn, Murphy, and Topel (2002) point out that low unemployment for men in the 1990s was accompanied by historically high non-employment suggesting that the 1990s economy was not as...

Since the mid-1990s college tuition costs have risen quickly while the rate of increase in the value of education has slowed considerably. Cecilia Rouse and Lisa Barrow explore the reasons and ask if college remains a good investment.