"Gendered Effects of Labels on Advanced Course Enrollment" Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025
This paper investigates gender differences in how high school students react to standardized test performance labels regarding their advanced math and English enrollment decisions. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that women labeled as not proficient in math are less likely to enroll in advanced math courses than their proficient-labeled peers. In English, the effect of labels on women's enrollment decisions is smaller and noisier. While, on average, men enroll in advanced classes at a lower rate than women, men's likelihood of enrollment is not impacted by the labels they receive, regardless of subject. These findings highlight unintended consequences of testing practices that affect human capital investment decisions differentially by gender, potentially contributing to the persistent underrepresentation of women in male-dominated fields.
"A (Dynamic) Investigation of Stereotypes, Belief-Updating, and Behavior" (with Katherine Coffman and Basit Zafar). Economic Inquiry, 2024
Using a controlled experiment, we study the dynamic effects of feedback on decision‐making across verbal skills and math. Before feedback, men are more optimistic about their performance and more willing to compete than women, especially in math. While feedback shifts individuals' beliefs and behavior, we see substantial persistence of gender gaps 1 week later. This is particularly true among individuals who receive negative feedback. Our results are not well-explained by motivated reasoning; in fact, negative feedback is more likely to be recalled than positive feedback. Overall, our results highlight the challenges involved in overcoming gender gaps in dynamic settings.
“The Impact of COVID-19 on Student Experiences and Expectations: Evidence from a Survey” (with Esteban Aucejo, Jacob French, and Basit Zafar). Journal of Public Economics, 2020
Press: The Chronicle of Higher Education, Market Watch, VoxEU
In order to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education, we surveyed approximately 1500 students at one of the largest public institutions in the United States using an instrument designed to recover the causal impact of the pandemic on students' current and expected outcomes. Results show large negative effects across many dimensions. Due to COVID-19: 13% of students have delayed graduation, 40% have lost a job, internship, or job offer, and 29% expect to earn less at age 35. Moreover, these effects have been highly heterogeneous. One-quarter of students increased their study time by more than 4 hours per week due to COVID-19, while another quarter decreased their study time by more than 5 hours per week. This heterogeneity often followed existing socioeconomic divides. Lower-income students are 55% more likely than their higher-income peers to have delayed graduation due to COVID-19. Finally, we show that the economic and health-related shocks induced by COVID-19 vary systematically by socioeconomic factors and constitute key mediators in explaining the large (and heterogeneous) effects of the pandemic.
“Political Views & College Choices in a Polarized America” (with Riley Acton and Emily Cook) Annenberg Institute EdWorkingPaper No. 25-1280, IZA Discussion Paper No. 18099, & CESifo Working Paper No. 12113
Non-Technical Summary: ProMarket
Press: Inside Higher Ed, Decode Econ, Stats + Stories Podcast , The 74
We examine the role of students’ political views in shaping college enrollment decisions in the United States. We hypothesize that students derive utility from attending institutions aligned with their political identities, which could reinforce demographic and regional disparities in educational attainment and reduce ideological diversity on campuses. Using four decades of survey data on college freshmen, we document increasing political polarization in colleges’ student bodies, which is not fully explained by sorting along demographic, socioeconomic, or academic lines. To further explore these patterns, we conduct a series of survey-based choice experiments that quantify the value students place on political alignment relative to factors such as cost and proximity. We find that both liberal and conservative students prefer institutions with more like-minded peers and, especially, with fewer students from the opposite side of the political spectrum. The median student is willing to pay up to $2,617 (12.5%) more to attend a college where the share of students with opposing political views is 10 percentage points lower, suggesting that political identity plays a meaningful role in the college choice process.
"Anticipated Discrimination and Gender Differences in Grade Sensitivity" (Reject & Resubmit JHR) Draft
Gender discrimination in the labor market is well documented. I examine how expectations of such discrimination relate to the value students place on academic performance during college. Using an original survey, I find that women expect both stricter hiring standards and higher levels of discrimination than men. A stated-preference choice experiment shows that women are more sensitive to grades than men. Controlling for beliefs about anticipated gender discrimination accounts for a substantial share of the observed gender gap in grade sensitivity. These findings show that expectations of labor market discrimination affect how women respond to their academic performance during college.
“Understanding Gaps in College Outcomes by First-Generation Status” with Esteban Aucejo, Jacob French, and Basit Zafar (Submitted) NBER Working Paper 34129
Press: Inside Higher Ed
Information frictions significantly shape students' academic trajectories, but their differential impact across student backgrounds remains understudied. Using a novel panel survey capturing incoming students' subjective expectations and anonymized transcript data from Arizona State University, we first show that parental education strongly predicts educational success, even after controlling for demographics and measurable college preparation. First-generation students enter college less informed and with more uncertain beliefs, facing substantial challenges stemming from limited understanding and uncertainty about the higher education setting. A Bayesian expected utility maximization model demonstrates that higher uncertainty alone can sustain persistent achievement gaps. Empirically, students update their beliefs and make academic decisions consistent with the model’s predictions. Finally, leveraging a natural experiment involving a targeted first-year experience program for academically marginal students, we demonstrate that cost-effective interventions can successfully reduce knowledge frictions, improve retention, and encourage beneficial early major switching.
“The Labor Market Impact of K-11 vs. K-12” with Scott Abrahams (Reject & Resubmit JHR) Annenberg Institute EdWorkingPaper No. 25-1306
In 1945, the State of Louisiana extended formal secondary public education from 11 years to 12, requiring an additional year of schooling to graduate from high school. Since many students appeared to follow a diploma-based stopping rule for educational attainment, the transition meant that consecutive birth cohorts received different amounts of schooling. We use this natural experiment to evaluate the long-run labor market impact of having an 11-year versus a 12-year program. Using a difference-in-differences analysis comparing Louisiana to other states that already had a 12-year program, we find that the cohorts exposed to the 12-year program earn about $3,000 more in real annual labor income (13% above the mean), with gains concentrated among White individuals and males. The policy does not alter the likelihood of graduating from high school, though there is suggestive evidence that White students subsequently become about four percentage points more likely to complete at least one year of college.
“The Role of Teacher Private Information in Predicting Student Test Scores” with Esteban Aucejo and Ilkem Gok Karci. (Submitted) Draft
This paper investigates whether incorporating teacher private information (TPI) on students' skills can improve the validity of value-added (VA) models in education. Using administrative data on teacher--student assignments, we show that a coarse measure of TPI significantly predicts students’ future academic outcomes, even after controlling for a rich set of student characteristics. For example, our measure of TPI has as much predictive power for future math achievement as the combined effect of student gender, race, special education, economic disadvantage and English learner statuses (ELS). Notably, teachers' private information of students' level of proficiency diverges more from test-based score levels for Black students, economically disadvantaged, English learners, and students in special education, suggesting that standardized tests may fail more often to fully capture the skills of these groups. We also find that TPI correlates with VA estimates when excluded from the model, indicating potential selection on observables. Incorporating TPI meaningfully alters teacher rankings based on VA, highlighting its role in improving both the accuracy and fairness of evaluation. Taken together, these findings underscore the value of leveraging teachers’ private information to enhance the robustness and equity of VA models and to more effectively identify persistently low-performing teachers.
“Gender Gap in Performance When Shaken and Stressed: Evidence from Korea’s College Scholastic Ability Test During Earthquakes” with Eunju Lee