I am a Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. I am the director of the Harvard Inequality and Social Policy program.
Here is a link to a short version of my current CV. Here is my Google Scholar page.
My research focuses broadly on the economics of skill development, education and the labor market. Along with Raj Chetty and John Friedman, I have started the CLIMB (Collegiate Leaders in Increasing MoBility) initiative, a partnership between researchers, policymakers and a diverse group of U.S. colleges and universities. CLIMB's goal is to understand the role of higher education in fostering social mobility. We are linking data from hundreds of institutional partners to data on earnings and other long-run outcomes. Our kickoff conference was on October 30th on the campus of UT-Austin.
Here is a link to the CLIMB website. If you are interested in discussing a research partnership with us, please click here.
Here is an interview with me about my course on economic inequality and my work on skills and technological change.
Beginning in January 2018, I am a coeditor at the AEJ: Applied. Send me your manuscripts! Here is a tweetstorm about my perspective on journal editing and what I am looking for in a paper.
FEATURED RESEARCH
College Access and College Quality
Stay tuned for more research coming out of the CLIMB Initiative.
I have a new paper with Chris Walters called "The Impact of State Budget Cuts on U.S. Postsecondary Attainment." Here is a recent non-technical summary of the paper in the NBER digest.
The abstract is below:
Increasing postsecondary attainment rates is an important economic priority, yet little is known about whether public subsidies can increase college attendance and completion. This paper studies the impact of state budget cuts to higher education on all U.S. public postsecondary institutions between 1990 and 2013. Using a budget shock measure driven by historical reliance on state appropriations, we nd large impacts of budget cuts on enrollment and degree completion. We find no evidence that enrollment declines are due to budget cuts being passed through as higher prices - rather, all of the impact is explained by spending cuts.
I recently wrote a paper for The Hamilton Project that proposes a Federal matching grant to support higher education spending in states that commit to providing tuition-free college.
Social Skills
My recent paper "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market" is forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The final pre-publication version is here. A complete replication package with data, programs and a readme file can be found here.
In related work with Lisa Kahn, I show that social skill requirements in job ads are positively correlated with average pay and firm performance, even within occupation and industry categories.
I recently wrote an overview article for the NBER Reporter called "The Value of Soft Skills in the Labor Market."
The Market Structure of U.S. Higher Education
I have several papers and projects in progress about online degree programs, for-profit colleges, college accountability and other related topics in U.S. higher education.
Claudia Goldin, Larry Katz and Noam Yuchtman and I show that prices for online degree programs have fallen sharply over the last decade, despite rising prices for in-person degree programs. We also conducted a resume audit study of the returns to post-secondary degrees, including degrees from online for-profit colleges.
Mike Lovenheim, Rich Patterson and I show evidence that competition from online degree programs lowered enrollment and increased per-student spending in public institutions.
David Figlio and I have written a recent overview paper about accountability in higher education for the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Here is a link to a short version of my current CV. Here is my Google Scholar page. Thanks for visiting.