The Post-9/11 GI Bill brought about the largest expansion in veteran education benefits since the end of World War II, increasing annual benefit expenditures from $3 billion to more than $13 billion. Leveraging variation over time, geography, and type of veterans, I explore the effect of financial aid on degree attainment. I find that the aid expansion increased degree attainment by 5–6 percentage points (25%), roughly 0.4 percentage points per $1,000 of additional maximum aid. These findings indicate that financial aid can increase degree attainment, even for individuals with high levels of initial support.

This article presents a discussion on the current and future research plans of participants about their organization. Author discusses the Securities and Exchange Commission's interest in the research that is being done in accounting and the extent of participation in it. The Commission's interest in accounting principles and their application, auditing standards, and financial reporting needs no elaboration as effective administration of the Securities Acts demands attention to these subjects. In working at the Commission author encounter various degrees of competence in accounting as in other professional work. Registrants and professional experts look to our prescribed forms and regulations for guidance. The Commission's report form for brokers and dealers is in the form of a financial questionnaire and conforms to the requirements of the New York Stock Exchange. Except for a revision in the minimum audit requirements applicable to monthly investment plans, this form has not been changed since 1942. Any revision of this form requires collaboration with special committees of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and representatives of the New York Stock Exchange.

Reviews the book "Investigations for Financing," by David Himmelblau.

In its study of accounting problems the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has a much broader objective than many other governmental agencies whose work requires the use of financial data and the proper application of accounting principles. The primary responsibility of the Commission under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, in respect to the financial data required to be filed with the Commission and made available to the public in accordance with the provisions of these Acts, is to insure that such information constitutes a disclosure fully adequate for the protection of investors." Accounting research in the Securities and Exchange Commission is guided by the very practical purpose of insuring that financial statements supplied to investors shall be presented on a consistent basis and in accordance with sound accounting principles. Optional accounting treatment of business transactions may be accepted only so long as the results obtained by such methods result in clear and unambiguous financial statements. The law requires this and the rules, regulations, and opinions of the Commission have been and will continue to be dictated by the necessity for disclosure fully adequate for the protection of investors.

A college degree offers a pathway to economic mobility for low-income students. Using a multisite randomized controlled trial combined with administrative and survey data, we demonstrate that intensive advising during high school and college significantly increases bachelor’s degree attainment among lower-income students. We leverage unique data on preadvising college preferences and causal forest methods to show that these gains are primarily driven by improvements in initial enrollment quality. Our results suggest that strategies targeting college choice may be a more effective and efficient means of increasing degree attainment than those focused solely on affordability. (JEL G51, I21, I22, I23)

Reviews the book "The Rise of the Accounting Profession: To Responsibility and Authority: 1937 to 1969," vol. 2, by John L. Carey.

Despite substantial evidence that resources and outcomes are transmitted across generations, there has been limited inquiry into the extent to which antipoverty programs actually disrupt the cycle of bad outcomes. We leverage the rollout of the United States’s largest early-childhood program, Head Start, to estimate the effect of early-childhood exposure among mothers on their children’s long-term outcomes. We find evidence of intergenerational transmission of effects in the form of increased educational attainment, reduced teen pregnancy, and reduced criminal engagement in the second generation. These effects correspond to an estimated increase in discounted second-generation wages of 6%–11%, depending on specification. Exploration of earlier outcomes suggests an important role for changes in parenting behavior and potential noncognitive channels.

Andrew Rudd, Barr Rosenberg, The "Market Model" In Investment Management, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 35, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting American Finance Association, Atlanta, Georgia, December 28-30, 1979 (May, 1980), pp. 597-607

We provide new evidence that cash transfers following the birth of a first child can have large and long-lasting effects on that child’s outcomes. We take advantage of the January 1 birthdate cutoff for U.S. child-related tax benefits, which results in families of otherwise similar children receiving substantially different refunds during the first year of life. For the average low-income single-child family in our sample, this difference amounts to roughly $1,300, or 10% of income. Using the universe of administrative federal tax data in selected years, we show that this transfer in infancy increases young adult earnings by at least 1%–2%, with larger effects for males. These effects show up at earlier ages in terms of improved math and reading test scores and a higher likelihood of high-school graduation. The observed effects on shorter-run parental outcomes suggest that additional liquidity during the critical window following the birth of a first child leads to persistent increases in family income that likely contribute to the downstream effects on children’s outcomes. The longer-term effects on child earnings alone are large enough that the transfer pays for itself through subsequent increases in federal income tax revenue.