Knowledge that Transforms

We provide the first evidence that the employers of network contacts from college can influence job search success. In contrast to the peer effects literature that emphasizes peer characteristics, we examine how the hiring rate of in-network firms affects reemployment probabilities. To avoid endogeneity from voluntary transitions, we focus on individuals who experience mass layoffs. Using administrative data and a cross-cohort design, we find that network connections with actively hiring employers increase the reemployment rate. This result is driven by reemployment at contacts’ firms. These results suggest that college can improve employment outcomes beyond improved human capital and signaling.

This paper estimates the causal impacts on child skills and the mechanisms producing these impacts using data from a randomized control experiment. We study a widely emulated early-childhood home visiting program and show the feasibility of replicating it at scale. We go beyond reporting treatment effects as unweighted item scores and assess item difficulties. To interpret treatment effects, we estimate individual-level latent skills and compare treatments and controls. The program substantially improves multiple skills. We decompose the source of treatment effects and find that enhancements in latent skills explain most of the conventional treatment effects for language and cognition.

The rise of accountability programs was perhaps the most noticeable change in American education during the 1990s and early 2000s. We measure how these programs affected students’ long-run outcomes. We find increases in income, occupational skill level, and attainment, though the labor market effects are insignificant in most specifications. A typical accountability regime with high-stakes testing in seven grades increased attainment by 0.1 years. Last, the pattern of occupational skill usage does not support concerns about teaching to the test. Our results suggest that accountability was more likely beneficial than harmful for students’ human capital.

This study examines the long-term effects of student loans and grants in Chile through a regression discontinuity design. It finds that university loans significantly boost degree completion, especially among women and low-income students, with marginal positive effects on employment and earnings for women. Vocational loans benefit only those ineligible for university loans. Conversely, grants, alongside loans, do not affect education or labor market outcomes. The limited impact of the tuition reductions induced by grants, combined with the substantial gains for low-income students, highlights the presence of credit constraints.

This paper evaluates self-employment assistance (SEA) programs, which are government initiatives extending the unemployment insurance system to support unemployment to self-employment transitions. Using a general equilibrium model of the US labor market, we show that these programs have important labor market mobility effects and increase the self-employment rate. They also significantly impact the composition and performance outcomes of self-employment: while lump-sum subsidies select low-skilled individuals, SEA programs contingent on previously employed earnings select skilled and wealthier individuals. At the aggregate level, the latter programs mainly reallocate individuals from employment to self-employment, leaving the unemployment rate largely unaffected.

We use a vignette-based survey experiment to elicit respondents’ assessments of the fairness of race-based hiring decisions and compare these assessments with the predictions of four preregistered ethical frameworks. While conservative respondents are much more accepting of discriminatory actions than others, respondents of all political leanings rate the relative fairness of different actions in a very similar way. A two-group framework in which one group (mostly self-described conservatives) values employers’ decision rights, the other has utilitarian concerns, and both groups use the same race-blind rules to assign relative fairness levels to actions explains our data well.

Weak local labor market conditions may change the trajectories of young adults who expected to find work. Well-documented responses include increasing educational investments, moving to more prosperous labor markets, or reducing labor force attachment. Military enlistment is a channel of potential adjustment that has received less study. Using data on Army recruits, we demonstrate a significant local response in enlistment to mass layoffs, characterized by increased labor supply to the military rather than increased local military recruiting. Our work documents the significance of military employment as an important arm of adjustment to local labor market shocks.

In theory, monitoring can improve employee motivation and effort, particularly in settings lacking measurable outputs, but research assessing monitoring as a motivator is limited to laboratory settings. To address this gap, I leverage exogenous variation in the presence and intensity of teacher monitoring, in the form of unannounced in-class observations as part of DC public schools’ IMPACT program. As monitoring intensifies, teachers use more individualized teaching and emphasize higher-level learning. When teachers are unmonitored, their students have lower test scores and increased suspensions. This evidence validates monitoring as a potential tool for enhancing teacher pedagogy and employee performance more broadly.