Adolescent Drug Use and the Deterrent Effect of School-Imposed Penalties

Simple OLS estimates of the effect of school-imposed penalties for drug use on a student's consumption of marijuana are biased if both are determined by unobservable school or individual attributes. The potential reverse causality is also a challenge to retrieving estimates of the causal relationship, as the severity of school sanctions may simply reflect the need for more-severe sanctions. I offer an instrumental-variables approach to retrieving an estimate of the causal response of marijuana use to sanctions and thereby demonstrate the efficacy of school-imposed penalties as a deterrent to adolescent drug use. This is the first evidence of such efficacy and, given what is known about the consequences of drug use, suggests that school sanctions may have important long-run benefits.drug, crime, adolescent, risky behavior, expulsion

Gender and the Influence of Peer Alcohol Consumption on Adolescent Sexual Activity

I consider the alcohol consumption of opposite-gender peers as explanatory to adolescent sexual intercourse and demonstrate that female sexual activity is higher where there is higher alcohol consumption among male peers. This relationship is robust to school fixed effects, cannot be explained by broader cohort effects or general anti-social behaviors in male peer groups, and is distinctly different from any influence of the alcohol consumption of female peers which is shown to have no influence on female sexual activity. There is no evidence that male sexual activity responds to female-peer alcohol consumption.peer, adolescent, alcohol, sex, risky behavior

Fix your attitude: Labor-market consequences of poor attitude and low self-esteem in youth

Using longitudinal data on a cohort of high-school graduates, I show that individuals who reveal poor attitudes and low self-esteem as high-school students attain fewer years of post-secondary education relative to their high-school cohort, are less likely to be employed for pay fourteen years following high school and, where working for pay, realize lower earnings. Further, I find evidence that poor attitude and esteem in high school are significant predictors of the degree of supervision under which individuals ultimately work. Poor attitude and esteem in youth are also closely associated with jobs that require individuals to spend their time working more with things, as opposed to people, for example. These relationships suggest that real economic consequence exist in fostering positive attitude and esteem in youth

Do No-Loan Policies Change the Matriculation Patterns of Low-Income Students?

We empirically examine whether there is discernable variation in the matriculation patterns of low-income students at public flagship institutions in the United States around changes in institutional financial-aid policies that target resident, low-income students with need-based aid. While enrollment responses cannot be attributed to these programs, we do find that institutions that introduce income-targeted aid subsequently enroll financially needier and geographically more-distant students. These findings imply that "improved" access may actually displace some needy students in favor of others.low income, financial aid, no loan, Pell

Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access

We consider the effect of legal access to alcohol on student achievement. We first estimate the effect using an RD design but argue that this approach is not well suited to the research question in our setting. Our preferred approach instead exploits the longitudinal nature of the data, identifying the effect by measuring the extent to which a student’s performance changes after he gains legal access to alcohol, controlling flexibly for the expected evolution of grades as students make progress towards their degrees. We find that students’ grades fall below their expected levels upon being able to drink legally, but by less than previously documented. We also show that there are effects on women and that the effects are persistent.

Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access

We consider the effect of legal access to alcohol, which is known to increase drinking behavior, on academic performance. We first estimate the effect using an RD design but argue that this approach is not well-suited to the research question in our setting. Our preferred approach instead exploits the longitudinal nature of the data, essentially identifying the effect by comparing a student's academic performance before and after turning 21. We find that students' grades fall below their expected levels upon being able to drink legally, but by less than previously documented. We also show that there are effects on women and that the effects are persistent. The main results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, individual trends, and individual quadratics, in addition to other controls, that account for the expected evolution of performance as students make progress towards their degrees.alcohol, post-secondary education, minimum legal drinking age

Running and Jumping Variables in RD Designs: Evidence Based on Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Birth Weights

Throughout the years spanned by the U.S. Vital Statistics Linked Birth and Infant Death Data (1983-2002), birth weights are measured most precisely for children of white and highly educated mothers. As a result, less healthy children, who are more likely to be of low socioeconomic status, are disproportionately represented at multiples of round numbers. This has crucial implications for any study using a regression discontinuity design in which birth weights are used as the running variable. For example, estimates will be biased in a manner that leads one to conclude that it is “good” to be strictly to the left of any 100-gram cutoff. As such, prior estimates of the effects of very low birth weight classification (Almond, Doyle, Kowalski, and Williams 2010) have been overstated and appear to be zero. This analysis highlights a more general problem that can afflict regression discontinuity designs. In cases where attributes related to the outcomes of interest predict heaping in the running variable, estimated effects are likely to be biased. We discuss approaches to diagnosing and correcting for this type of problem.regression discontinuity, donut RD, birth weight, infant mortality

HOPE for the Pell? Institutional Effects in the Intersection of Merit-Based and Need-Based Aid

Prior empirical evidence finds that general enrollment effects of merit-aid programs such as the Georgia Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally (HOPE) scholarship are large and significant, while the effects of need-based aid programs such as the Pell grant are modest and often insignificant. This paper uses new panel data on Pell awards to examine the influence of the Georgia HOPE scholarship on needy-student enrollments. We demonstrate that the introduction of merit aid in Georgia generally improves the college access of needy students and has been leveraged into greater federal Pell assistance. While institution-specific increases in both Pell enrollment and funding are largest at two-year and less selective four-year institutions, the results suggest that Pell students are not crowded out of more selective schools by HOPE's intent to retain the best Georgia high school students, as might have been anticipated

Money for Nothing? The Impact of Changes in the Pell Grant Program on Institutional Revenues and the Placement of Needy Students

Using new institutional-level data, we assess the impact of changing federal aid levels on institutional-level Pell revenues. Using various policy instruments associated with Pell generosity, we quantify the sensitivity of institutional Pell revenues to the generosity of the Pell Grant program. In general, we find an elastic response of institutional Pell revenues with respect to the maximum Pell award, where other policy instruments associated with Pell generosity are found to have an inelastic or zero impact. We also document significant asymmetries across institutional selectivity, both in magnitude and in terms of which channel accounts for the measured sensitivity—award values directly or institutional enrollment. In the end, exogenous changes in the federal Pell Grant program are found to correlate strongly with changes in the distribution of needy students and revenues across institutional quality

FDI in Space: Spatial Autoregressive Relationships in Foreign Direct Investment

Theoretical models of foreign direct investment (FDI) have only recently begun to model the role of third countries, and the empirical FDI literature has almost exclusively examined bilateral FDI data without recognizing the potential interdependence between FDI decisions to alternative host countries. This paper uses spatial econometric techniques to examine the spatial correlation between FDI to alternative (neighboring) regions. The sign of such correlations can provide evidence for or against alternative theories for FDI motivations. Using data on OECD countries from 1980-2000, we find evidence consistent with export platform FDI in Europe.