Knowledge that Transforms

This paper provides a snapshot of undergraduate research at top 30 liberal arts institutions and top 30 national universities (based on U.S. News and World Report rankings, 2017). This description provides a broader perspective than exists in the literature as we identify departmental motivations for providing undergraduate research opportunities despite the lack of mandates. We also document the extent to which a variety of forms of undergraduate research occur (programmatically and by student numbers). Also included are descriptions of innovative approaches to promoting undergraduate research in light of constraints and methods for creating a culture conducive to undergraduate research.

Successful platforms attract not just many users, but also those of the right kind. 'The right kind of user' is one who can either be directly monetized or who differentially attracts other valuable users. Bonacich centrality on the network of user sorting with direct value of monetization captures this feedback loop and thus characterizes the value of user characteristics. We use this value to determine optimal steady-state platform design and reliable means for platforms to reach such a steady state. We apply these results respectively to explain the dynamic growth strategy of social networks and urban development policies of cities.

Many school and college admission systems use centralized mechanisms to allocate seats based on applicant preferences and school priorities. When tie-breaking uses non-randomly assigned criteria like distance or a test score, applicants with the same preferences and priorities are not directly comparable. The non-lottery setting does generate a kind of local random assignment that opens the door to regression discontinuity designs. This paper introduces a hybrid RD/propensity score empirical strategy that exploits quasi-experiments embedded in serial dictatorship, a mechanism widely used for college and selective K-12 school admissions. We use our approach to estimate achievement effects of Chicago's exam schools.

Aggregate real wages exhibit less procyclicality than most macroeconomic models predict. We use 35 years of Current Population Survey data to confirm that the puzzling behavior of wages largely owes to changes in the composition of the employed over the business cycle. This composition effect relates to changes in both the number and the relative wage levels of those entering and exiting. The changing gap in wages of entrants and exiters is especially important for the unemployed. A large part of this wage gap is due to differences in average Mincer residuals between entrants and exiters.

In an earlier work (Kamada and Kojima 2015), we introduced “matching with constraints,” a two-sided matching problem in which the market is subject to feasibility constraints. That paper proposed and analyzed a possible solution to this problem and discussed various real-market applications of our results. The present paper reorganizes some of the findings from our more recent effort, based on Kamada and Kojima (2016a, b).

This study investigated the likely effects of undergraduate economics on whether a college graduate has opened a retirement account four years after graduation. Economic education is measured by the number of economics credit hours or whether a college graduate had majored in economics. Additional control variables for the logit analyses include occupation differences, employment record, and some demographics. Completing an undergraduate course in economics is significantly associated with having a retirement account, and economics majors are more likely than some other majors to have a retirement account. The analysis uses college transcript data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond study ( nces.ed.gov/surveys/b&b/ ).

I estimate gender price discrimination in the Ugandan antimalarial drug market with an audit study. To determine whether results are consistent with statistical or taste-based discrimination, I contrast gender results with results by ethnicity (tribe). Vendors initially offer women prices that are $0.12 (3 percent) higher. However, women are 16 percentage points more likely to successfully bargain for a discount, resulting in no differential in price paid. Results are stronger among majority-tribe females. I find no differences in drug quality. Both women and minorities report better service quality. Offer price differentials suggest statistical discrimination; there is no differential for prices paid.

There has been a large rise in US top income inequality since the 1980s. We merge a widely studied model of the Pareto tail of labor incomes with a canonical model of consumption and savings to study the consequences of this increase for aggregate demand. Our model suggests that the rise of the top 1 percent may have led to a large increase in desired savings and can explain a 0.45pp to 0.85pp decline in long-run real interest rates. This effect arises from both a wealth effect at the top and increased precautionary savings from declines lower in the income distribution.

This project uses third-party information reporting and population-level administrative tax data to identify the population of nonfilers. This population consists of individuals who do not file a tax return despite having income reported by third parties to the United States Internal Revenue Service. After identifying and characterizing this population, we identified nonfilers who may have been eligible for Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) benefits. Using an experimental sample drawn from this population of potentially EITC-eligible nonfilers, we conducted two randomized controlled trials to test multiple hypotheses regarding inattention and recency effects in these low-income earners' tax filing decisions.

The US workforce has had little change in real wages, income, or earnings since the year 2000. However, even when there is little change in the average rate at which workers are compensated, individual workers experienced a distribution of wage and earnings changes. In this paper, we demonstrate how earnings evolve in the US economy in the years 2001-2014 on a forthcoming dataset on earnings for stayers and transitioners from the U.S. Census Bureau's Job-to-Job Flows data product. We account for the roles of on-the-job earnings growth, job-to-job flows, and nonemployment in the growth of U.S. earnings.