A point of contention in the refugee crisis involves possible adverse effects on host communities associated with poor, low-skilled migrants with low host-community language knowledge. We use unique matched birth and schooling records to examine the effects of a large influx of poor, non-English-speaking Haitian migrants into Florida public schools immediately following the devastating 2010 earthquake. We find zero or modestly positive estimated effects of these migrants on the educational outcomes of incumbent students in the year of the earthquake or in the 2 years that follow, regardless of the socioeconomic status, grade level, ethnicity, or birthplace of incumbent students.

This paper investigates whether the housing market responds to the information incorporated in state-administered school grades. We study whether school grades affect families' residential locations and house prices. Using detailed data on repeated sales of individual residential properties in the state of Florida, we find evidence that there is an independent effect of these grades on house prices and residential location, above and beyond the estimated effects of test scores and the other components of the school grades. Because these grades have a large stochastic component, however, we find that over time the estimated effects of the grades has diminished.

This article presents the first experimental evidence on the effects of live versus Internet media of instruction. Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an Internet setting where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same. We find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates Internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students. We also provide suggestions for future experimentation in other settings.

This study makes use of detailed student-level data from eight cohorts of first-year students at Northwestern University to investigate the relative effects of tenure track/tenured versus contingent faculty on student learning. We focus on classes taken during a student’s first term at Northwestern and employ an identification strategy in which we control for both student-level fixed effects and next-class-taken fixed effects to measure the degree to which contingent faculty contribute more or less to lasting student learning than do other faculty. We find consistent evidence that students learn relatively more from contingent faculty in their firstterm courses. This result is driven by the fact that the bottom quarter of tenure track/tenured faculty (as indicted by our measure of teaching effectiveness) has lower “value added” than their contingent counterparts. Differences between contingent and tenure track/tenured faculty are present across a wide variety of subject areas and are particularly pronounced for Northwestern’s averages and less-qualified students.

We use population-level data on all Florida children born between 1994 and 2002 to examine the long-term effects of prenatal exposure to environmental toxicants from a Superfund (toxic waste) site. We compare siblings who faced different toxic exposures during gestation because of Superfund site cleanup (or, in other specifications, because of a family move). Children exposed to toxic waste while gestating have substantially worse cognitive and behavioral outcomes than do their unaffected siblings. These results are much larger than what would have been predicted were the effects of Superfund site exposure operating solely through standard measures of birth outcomes.

We study how author connections influence paper outcomes at the Journal of Human Resources. Authors who attended the same PhD program, worked with, affiliate with the same National Bureau of Economic Research program(s), or are closely linked via coauthorship networks as the handling editor are more likely to avoid a desk rejection. Reviewer recommendations are similarly influenced by PhD and employment matches. Matching on signals of ability—such as top five publishing, attending a high-ranked PhD program, or working in a high-ranked department—also impact peer review decisions. We find some evidence that published papers with greater connectivity subsequently receive fewer citations.

We use linked birth and education records from Florida to investigate how the identification of childhood disabilities varies by race and school racial composition. Using a series of decompositions, we find that black and Hispanic students are identified with disabilities at lower rates than are observationally similar white students. Black and Hispanic students are overidentified in schools with relatively small shares of minorities and substantially underidentified in schools with large minority shares. Our results are consistent with a heightened awareness among school officials of disabilities in students who are racially and ethnically distinct from the majority race in the school.

We study the effect of exposure to immigrants on the educational outcomes of U.S.-born students, using a unique dataset combining population-level birth and school records from Florida. This research question is complicated by the substantial school selection of U.S.-born students, especially among White and comparatively affluent students, in response to the presence of immigrant students in the school. We propose a new identification strategy, comparing sibling outcomes with the inclusion of family fixed effects, to partial out the unobserved non-random selection of native-born families into schools. We find that the presence of immigrant students has a positive effect on the academic achievement of U.S.-born students, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Moreover, the presence of immigrants does not negatively affect the performance of affluent U.S.-born students, who typically show a higher academic achievement compared to immigrant students. We provide suggestive evidence on potential channels.

Little is known about the role birth order plays in delinquency and adult crime outcomes that carry significant externalities. We use rich data sets from Denmark and Florida to examine these outcomes and explore potential mechanisms. Despite large environmental differences between the areas, we find remarkably consistent results: in families with two or more children, secondborn boys are 20%–40% more likely to be disciplined in school and enter the criminal justice system than are their firstborn male siblings. We rule out health at birth and school quality as mechanisms but find evidence for the role of parental time investment.