Go to RouteY
Brigham Young University
Published Papers
|
"An Approach to Longitudinally Matching Current Population Survey (CPS) Respondents." |
With Brigitte Madrian. Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, 2000, 26: 31- |
|
In this paper, we propose an approach for evaluating the trade-offs inherent in different approaches used to match Current Population Survey (CPS) respondents across various CPS surveys. Because there is some measurement error in both the variables used the identify individuals over time and in the characteristics of individuals at any point in time, any procedure used to match CPS respondents has the possibility of both generating incorrect matches and failing to generate potentially valid matches. We propose using the information contained in the variable on whether an individual lived in the same house on March 1 of the previous year as a way to gauge these trade-offs. We find that as measured by reported residence one year ago, increasing the fraction of "invalid'' merges that are rejected usually comes at a cost of decreasing the fraction of "valid'' merges that are retained. However, there are clearly some approaches that are superior to others in the sense that they result in both a higher fraction of "invalid'' merges being rejected and a higher fraction of "valid'' merges being retained. |
|
|
“Are Idle Hands the Devil’s Workshop? Incapacitation, Concentration, and Juvenile Crime.” |
With Brian Jacob. American Economic Review, 2003, 93(5): 1560-1577. |
|
|
This paper examines the short-term effect of school on juvenile crime. To do so, we bring together daily measures of criminal activity and detailed school calendar information from 29 jurisdictions across the country, and utilize the plausibly exogenous variation generated by teacher in-service days. We find that the level of property crime committed by juveniles decrease by 14 percent on days when school is in session, but the level of violent crime increases by 28 percent on such days. Our findings suggest the both incapacitation and concentration influence juvenile crime. |
|
“The Impact of Teacher Training on Student Achievement: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from School Reform Efforts in Chicago.” |
With Brian Jacob. Journal of Human Resources, 2004, 39(1): 50-79. |
|
|
While there is a substantial literature on the relationship between general teacher characteristics and student learning, school districts and states often rely on in-service teacher training as a part of school reform efforts. Recent school reform efforts in Chicago provide an opportunity to examine in-service training using a quasi-experimental research design. In this paper, we use a regression discontinuity strategy to estimate the effect of teacher training on the math and reading performance of of elementary students. We find that marginal increases in in-service training have no statistically or academically significant effect on either reading or math achievement, suggesting that modest investments in staff development may not be sufficient to increase the achievement of elementary school children in high-poverty schools |
|
“Remedial Education and Student Achievement: A Regression-Discontinuity Analysis.” |
With Brian Jacob. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2004, 86(1): 226-244. |
|
|
As standards and accountability have become increasingly prominent features of the educational landscape, educators have relied more on remedial programs such as summer school and grade retention to help low-achieving students meet minimum academic standards. Yet the evidence on the effectiveness of such programs is mixed, and prior research suffers from selection bias. However, recent school reform efforts in Chicago provide an opportunity to examine the causal impact of these remedial education programs. In 1996, the Chicago Public Schools instituted an accountability policy that tied summer school and promotional decisions to performance on standardized tests, which resulted in a highly nonlinear relationship between current achievement and the probability of attending summer school or being retained. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the net effect of these programs was to substantially increase academic achievement among third-graders, but not sixth-graders. In addition, contrary to conventional wisdom and prior research, we find that retention increases achievement for third-grade students and has little effect on math achievement for sixth-grade students. |
|
Journal of Urban Economics, 2004, 56(2): 169-191. |
|
|
|
Using data on third and sixth grade students in the Chicago public schools, I examine peer effects using variation in school tracking policies. In tracked schools, high ability students receive the benefit of being placed in classes with high ability peers. The opposite is the case for low ability students. If peer effects were important, one would expect students with high initial ability in tracked schools to outperform similar students in untracked schools. Similarly, students with low initial ability in tracked schools should lag behind their counterparts in untracked schools. Using an identification strategy that takes advantage of this intuition, I find peer effects to be quite small, though generally positive and statistically significant. |
|
“Examining the Relationship between Women’s Education and Marriage Outcomes.” |
With Frank McIntyre. Journal of Labor Economics, 2006, 24(4): 787-830. |
|
Get it at University of Chicago
|
Using 2000 Census data, we describe the relationship between women’s education and marriage outcomes. Women’s education is strongly related to husband's income and marital status. This relationship is highly nonlinear and varies across the distribution of husband's earnings. Roughly half of the correlation between women’s education and consumption operates through the marriage market. Using 1980 Census data and the quarter of birth instruments proposed by Angrist and Krueger, we find that women's education may have a positive causal effect on husband's earnings, though not on probability of marriage |
|
“The Dynamics of Criminal Behavior: Evidence from Weather Shocks.” |
With Brian Jacob and Enrico Moretti. Journal of Human Resources, 2007, 42(3): 489-527. |
| |
While the persistence of criminal activity is well documented, this may be due to persistence in the unobserved determinants of crime. There are good reasons to believe, however, that there may actually be a negative relationship between crime rates in a particular area due to temporal displacement. We exploit the correlation between weather and crime to examine the short-run dynamics of crime. Using variation in lagged crime rates due to weather shocks, we find that the positive serial correlation is reversed. These findings suggest that the long-run impact of temporary crime-prevention efforts may be smaller than the short-run effects. |
|
"What Do Parents Value in Education? An Empirical Examination of Parents’ |
With Brian Jacob. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2007, 122(4): 1603-1637. |
|
|
This paper examines revealed preferences of parents for their children's education, using parent requests for individual elementary school teachers and information on teacher attributes, including principal reports of teacher characteristics that are typically unobservable. On average, parents strongly prefer teachers whom principals describe as good at promoting student satisfaction, though they also value teacher ability to raise academic achievement. These aggregate effects mask striking differences across schools. Families in higher poverty schools strongly value student achievement and appear indifferent to the principal's report of a teacher's ability to promote student satisfaction. The results are reversed for families in wealthier schools. |
|
“Can Principals Identify Effective Teachers? Evidence on Subjective Performance Evaluation in Education.” |
With Brian Jacob. Journal of Labor Economics, 2008, 25(1) : 101-136. |
|
|
We examine how well principals can distinguish between more and less effective teachers. To put principal evaluations in context, we compare them with the traditional determinants of teacher compensation—education and experience—as well as value-added measures of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement gains. We present “out-of-sample” predictions that mitigate concerns that the teacher quality and student achievement measures are determined simultaneously. We find that principals can generally identify teachers who produce the largest and smallest standardized achievement gains but have far less ability to distinguish between teachers in the middle of this distribution. |
Forthcoming Papers
Working Papers
