Research
Job Market Paper:
Abstract: I study the effect of compulsory schooling law adoption in the historical US South. By combining a novel dataset of county-level compulsory schooling laws from 1900-1940 with the full-count US Census, I estimate the effects of exposure to required-schooling laws for southern-born workers in 1940. Direct exposure to compulsory schooling increases years of schooling, while indirect exposure from neighboring counties leads to fewer years of schooling. Patterns of heterogeneity in the indirect effect suggests it is driven by infra-marginal students dropping-out after primary school in response to higher wages. Policymakers thus face a trade-off when child labor is common: increasing enrollment in one market undermines enrollment in another by raising the outside-option wage. Furthermore, although both whites and blacks saw positive labor market returns from direct exposure to required-schooling, white workers did so by earning higher wages in the service-sector jobs of highly productive markets, while black workers left the wage-earning system entirely to become farmers and entrepreneurs.
Working Papers:
Growing the Pie or Stealing Lunch? Separately Estimating the Private and Social Returns to Schooling in the Early 20th Century South
Abstract: Do workers benefit from better educated peers, or does labor market competition mean that the private return to education come at the cost of others? In this paper, I use the county-level adoption of required schooling in the southern US during the early twentieth century to provide novel insights on the externalities of education. The spatial variation of adoption allows me to infer both the direct and indirect exposure to required schooling laws of workers in the 1940 census, which I use as instruments to jointly estimate a direct, mincerian effect of education as well as an indirect effect on peers. I find that estimating the direct effect alone gives a mincer return of roughly .15, and estimating both effects jointly gives a mincer return of .1 and a social return of .05. This implies that roughly one-third of the private return to education in this context can be attributed to positive externalities from peers also becoming better educated. Current work is exploring the extent to which this conclusion can be extended to estimates of returns to education in other contexts.
Mapping the Market: A Comprehensive Empirical Characterization of 21 Markets for Private Tutoring in Pakistan, with Muhammad Karim
Abstract: This paper uses a survey of 15,000 households and 260 tutors to fully characterize 21 distinct education markets in Pakistan. Roughly 30% of students receive daily private tutoring, making it a major potential vehicle for scaling educational best practices. Moreover, most paid employment for women with secondary degrees in these markets was private tutoring—cultural constraints limit women's work opportunities, and tutoring is one of the highest-paid activities women can perform from home. This has led to tutor markets where many suppliers offer group-based tutoring in their homes after school. However, follow-up surveys and pilot work show that, while the market may be pervasive, it is not always visible—parents are often unaware of alternative tutor options for their child. We are currently studying how addressing this information failure affects both the supply and demand sides of the tutor market.