This randomized trial investigates the long-term effects of a primary school scholarship program in rural Cambodia. We estimate impacts--9 years after program inception--on educational attainment, cognitive skills, socio-emotional outcomes, labor market outcomes, and well-being. Our results point to systematic improvements in educational…

I provide novel evidence on the role of imperfect information in shaping childhood obesity. Between 2003 and 2017, 24 states began requiring schools to perform Body Mass Index assessments on students. Using the 1991 to 2017 National and State Youth Risk Behavior Surveys and a stacked difference-in-differences identification strategy, I show that…

Master's degree enrollment and debt have increased substantially in recent years, raising important questions about the labor market value of these credentials. Using a field experiment featuring 9,480 job applications submitted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, I examine employers' responses to job candidates with a Master of…

This paper provides novel evidence on how a sharp increase in labor force participation among older women affects the provision of informal care to their older parents. Based on data from Understanding Society -- The UK Household Longitudinal Study, we use an instrumental variable approach that exploits a unique reform that increased the female…

We study how health insurance eligibility affects financial distress for young adults using the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) dependent coverage mandate--the part of the ACA that requires private health insurance plans to cover individuals up to their 26th birthday. We examine the effects of both gaining and losing eligibility by exploiting the…

We conduct the first quantitative analysis of "blind removals," an increasingly popular reform that seeks to reduce the over-representation of Black children in foster care by eliminating biases in the removal decisions of investigators. We first show that over-representation in most foster care systems is driven by Black children being…

The previous expansion of EdTech as a substitute for traditional learning around the world, the recent full-scale substitution due to COVID-19, and potential future shifts to blended approaches suggest that it is imperative to understand input substitutability between in-person and online learning. We explore input substitutability in education by…

Interior immigration enforcement in the U.S. has rapidly increased over the past two decades, including increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity and the revival of workplace raids under the Trump administration. We contribute to the body of research that aims to better understand the consequences of immigration enforcement for…

The transfer between two-year and four-year colleges is a critical path to baccalaureate attainment. Yet students face a number of barriers in transfer pathways, including a lack of coherent coordination and articulation between their community colleges and four-year institutions, resulting in excess units and increased time to degree. In this…

Children of teen mothers have worse academic, labor market, and behavioral outcomes in the United States, but it is not clear whether these poor outcomes are caused by having a young mother or driven by selection into teen motherhood. Understanding the reasoning behind poor child outcomes is important for designing effective policies to improve…

We study basic information treatments regarding sexual orientation using randomized experiments in three countries with strong and widespread anti-gay attitudes: Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Participants who received information about the economic costs to society of sexual orientation discrimination were significantly more likely than those in a…

One major criticism of Universal Basic Income is that unconditional cash transfers discourage recipients from working. Evidence to date has largely relied on targeted and/or conditional transfer programs. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions from such programs because universal transfers may induce a positive demand shock by distributing…

Participation in non-parental child care arrangements is now the norm for preschool-age children in the U.S. However, child care services are becoming increasingly expensive for many families, and quality is highly uneven across providers and sectors, raising questions about the impact of child care costs and quality on parental employment and…

Using administrative data from Maine to quantify the effect of vocational rehabilitation (VR) services on employment outcomes for transition-age youth with disabilities, we exploited the variation in VR counselors' propensity to develop Individualized Plans for Employment (IPEs) for VR youth as an instrument for service receipt. We found that…

This study provides the first empirical evidence on the extent of self-employment within the U.S. justice-involved population. Using linked tax return and Criminal Justice Administrative Records System data, we find that 28 percent of individuals with criminal records are self-employed. Justice-involved individuals are 22 percent more likely to…