Job Market Paper

• The Complementarity of Incentive Policies in Education: Evidence from New York City 

  Abstract: Many production activities require cooperation between agents in an organization, and incentive alignment may take advantage of complementarities in such activities. This paper investigates such a possibility by examining two education policies that were implemented in New York City: a grade retention policy that incentivizes students and an accountability scheme that incentivizes schools. I employ double- and triple-difference strategies to estimate the individual and combined effects of these policies. The policies alone appear to have generated either modest or insignificant improvements in student outcomes. Combined, however, the retention and accountability policies led to a substantial increase in math test scores and reductions in student absences and suspension rates; the effect on English test scores is positive but not robust. These results underscore the value of using incentive alignment to realize complementarities in organizations.

Working Papers

• Does Repeating a Grade Make Students (and Parents) Happier? Regression Discontinuity Evidence from New York City (with Jonah Rockoff) Abstract

  When a student’s academic knowledge or preparation is well below that of his or her age group, a common policy response is to have that student repeat a grade level and join the following, younger cohort. Evaluating the impacts of grade retention is made complicated by the potential incomparability of (1) retained students to promoted peers and (2) outcomes measured differently across grade levels. In this paper, we use novel data from New York City to ask whether parents’ and students’ self-reported educational experiences are significantly affected by grade retention. We take advantage of surveys that ask the same questions regardless of a student’s grade level, and implement a regression discontinuity approach, identifying causal effects on students retained due to missed cutoffs on math and English exams. We find that parental satisfaction with the quality of their child’s education and students’ sense of personal safety both improve significantly over the three years we can observe from the time of retention. Our findings suggest that the stringent and somewhat controversial test-based retention policies enacted in New York had positive effects on the educational experience of these marginal students.  Close

Work In Progress

• Extrapolation of Treatment Effects in Multidimensional Regression Discontinuity Designs  
  (with Miikka Rokkanen)