Publications

This paper describes randomized field experiments in eighty-four urban public schools in two cities designed to understand the impact of aligned incentives on student achievement. In Washington DC, incentives were “horizontal” – provided to one agent...

This article describes a randomized field experiment in which parents were provided financial incentives to engage in behaviors designed to increase early childhood cognitive and executive function skills through a parent academy. Parents were rewarded...

We estimate the impact of charter schools on early-life labor market outcomes using administrative data from Texas. We find that, at the mean, charter schools have no impact on test scores and a negative impact on earnings. No Excuses charter schools...

This study examines the impact on student achievement of implementing management training for principals in traditional public schools in Houston, Texas, using a school-level randomized field experiment. Across two years, principals were provided 300...

In a field experiment, we provide financial incentives to teachers framed either as gains, received at the end of the year, or as losses, in which teachers receive upfront bonuses that must be paid back if their students do not improve sufficiently...

We propose a theory of social interactions based on self-selection and comparative advantage. In our model, students choose peer groups based on their comparative advantage within a social environment. The effect of moving a student into a different...

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important...

We introduce a model in which agents observe signals about the state of the world, some of which are open to interpretation. Our decision makers first interpret each signal and then form a posterior on the sequence of interpreted signals. This ‘double...

This study examines the impact on student achievement of high-dosage reading tutoring for middle school students in New York City public schools, using a school-level randomized field experiment. Across three years, schools offered at least 130 hours of 4...