Brown continued her career until domestic responsibilities combined with her disagreement with many aspects of the women's rights movement and caused her to discontinue lecturing. Writing became her new outlet for initiation positive change for women; in her works she encouraged women to seek out masculine professions, and asked men to share in household duties, yet she retained the belief that women's primary role is care of the home and family. Brown was the author of several books in the fields of theology and philosophy. She also combined science and philosophy, writing The Sexes Throughout Nature in 1875, in which she argued that evolution resulted in two sexes that were different but equal. She answered Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer who she considered to be the most influential men of her day[6] aware she would be considered presumptuous for criticizing evolutionary theory but wrote that "will never be lessened by waiting".[7] Darwin had written a letter to her in 1869, thanking her for a copy of her book, Studies in General Science.[8] She also wrote a novel, The Island Neighbors, in 1871, and a collection of poetry, Sea Drift, in 1902.
Although wide variation in teacher effectiveness is well established, much less is known about differences in teacher improvement over time. We document that average returns to teaching experience mask large variation across individual teachers, and across groups of teachers working in different schools. We examine the role of school context in explaining these differences using a measure of the professional environment constructed from teachers’ responses to state-wide surveys. Our analyses show that teachers working in more supportive professional environments improve their effectiveness more over time than teachers working in less supportive contexts. On average, teachers working in schools at the 75th percentile of professional environment ratings improved 20% more than teachers in schools at the 25th percentile after five years.
Attracting and retaining effective teachers in high-poverty, urban schools remains a critical challenge. Some scholars interpret high turnover rates at these schools as evidence that teachers prefer to work with wealthier, whiter groups of students. Others argue that teachers are leaving behind the poor working conditions that tend to prevail in these schools. We interviewed 95 teachers and administrators in six high-poverty, urban schools in order to understand teachers’ views about their work with students and how school context influences their experience. We found that most teachers chose their schools, and stayed, because of their students. However, when schools failed to provide instructional supports, an orderly environment and extra assistance for students, teachers expressed frustration and their intentions to leave.
In American elections, labor union members are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates, and Democrats tend to represent states and districts with more union members. But does the strength of organized labor have a causal effect on election results? I use three different identification methods to measure union effects and find that unions
do have a positive effect on Democratic vote share in congressional, senate, and presidential races. First, using union certification regression discontinuities, I show that an additional union increases Democratic vote share in a congressional district by 0.7 percentage points. Second, comparing neighboring counties across state borders, I
estimate that union-weakening right-to-work laws reduce both presidential and senate Democratic vote share by 3 percentage points. Finally, relying on historical instruments and geographic union spillovers, I find that a 1 percentage point increase in county union density increases presidential Democratic vote share by 0.5 to 1 percentage points.
We review the main identification strategies and empirical evidence on the role of expectations in the new Keynesian Phillips curve, paying particular attention to the issue of weak identification. Our goal is to provide a clear understanding of the role of expectations that integrates across the different papers and specifications in the literature. We discuss the properties of the various limited-information econometric methods used in the literature and provide explanations of why they produce conflicting results. Using a common data set and a flexible empirical approach, we find that researchers are faced with substantial model uncertainty, as different combinations of various a priori reasonable specification choices give rise to a vast set of point estimates. Moreover, conditional on a model, estimation is subject to considerable sampling uncertainty due to weak identification. We highlight the assumptions that seem to matter most for identification and the configuration of point estimates. We conclude that the literature has reached a limit on how much can be learned about the new Keynesian Phillips curve from aggregate macroeconomic time series. New identification approaches and new data sets are needed to reach an empirical consensus.
In this paper, we develop bias formulas for front-door estimates and front-door/back- door hybrid estimates of average treatment effects under general patterns of measured and unmeasured confounding. These bias formulas allow for sensitivity analysis, and also allow for comparisons of the bias resulting from standard back-door covariate ad- justments (also known as direct adjustment and standardization). We also present these bias comparisons in two special cases: linear structural equation models and nonrandomized program evaluations with one-sided noncompliance. These compar- isons demonstrate that there are broad classes of applications for which the front-door or hybrid adjustments will be preferred to the back-door adjustments. We illustrate this point with an application to the National JTPA (Job Training Partnership Act) Study, showing that by using information on enrollment in addition to pre-treatment covariates, the front-door approach provides estimates that are closer to the experi- mental benchmark than the back-door approach.
In a one-shot Prisoners’ dilemma experiment, female participants are highly sensitive
to the social frame. Male participants are not. Additional evidence suggests that the operative gender difference is in beliefs, not preferences.
The recent housing bust precipitated a wave of mortgage defaults, with over seven percent of the owner-occupied housing stock experiencing a foreclosure. This paper presents a model that shows how foreclosures can exacerbate a housing bust and delay the housing market's recovery. By raising the ratio of sellers to buyers, by making buyers more selective, and by changing the composition of houses that sell, foreclosures freeze up the market for retail (non-foreclosure) sales and reduce both price and volume. Because negative equity is necessary for default, these general equilibrium effects on prices can create price-default spirals that amplify an initial shock. To assess the magnitude of these channels, the model is calibrated to simulate the downturn. The amplification channel is significant. The model successfully explains aggregate and retail price declines, the foreclosure share of volume, and the number of foreclosures both nationwide and across MSAs. While the model can explain variation in sales across MSAs, it cannot account for the aggregate level of the volume decline, suggesting that other forces have reduced sales nationwide. The quantitative analysis implies that from 2007 to 2011 foreclosures exacerbated aggregate price declines by approximately 50 percent and declines in the prices of retail homes by approximately 30 percent.
