Classroom Experiments: Is More More?

By Tisha L. N. Emerson and Linda English

American Economic Review, May 2016

Studies have demonstrated that classroom experiments have a positive effect on student achievement in economics courses. Questions remain regarding the appropriate number of experiments. In the current study we attempt to determine whether more intensive ...

Measuring the Effect of Blended Learning: Evidence from a Selective Liberal Arts College

By Aaron Swoboda and Lauren Feiler

American Economic Review, May 2016

We compare introductory microeconomics courses that employ a blended learning approach to more traditional control courses at a selective liberal arts college. The blended learning courses required students to complete online homework and watch video lect...

The Impact of Challenge Quizzes on Student Knowledge

By KimMarie McGoldrick and Peter W. Schuhmann

American Economic Review, May 2016

We evaluate the efficacy of a blended formative/summative assessment tool developed to support mastery learning by students without placing undue burden on instructors. Our innovation provides students with an opportunity to take a more difficult "challen...

A Randomized Assessment of Online Learning

By William T. Alpert, Kenneth A. Couch, and Oskar R. Harmon

American Economic Review, May 2016

A microeconomics principles course employing random assignment across three sections with different teaching models is used to explore learning outcomes as measured by a cumulative final exam for students who participate in traditional face-to-face classr...

Sources of Inefficiency in Healthcare and Education

By Amitabh Chandra and Douglas Staiger

American Economic Review, May 2016

Healthcare and education exhibit wide variation in spending that is loosely associated with outcomes. We study supply-side explanations for such variation in in healthcare, and extend this discussion to how it might apply to education. In both sectors, va...

Interpreting Tests of School VAM Validity

By Joshua Angrist, Peter Hull, Parag Pathak, and Christopher Walters

American Economic Review, May 2016

We develop over-identification tests that use admissions lotteries to assess the predictive value of regression-based value-added models (VAMs). These tests have degrees of freedom equal to the number of quasi-experiments available to estimate school effe...

Using Lagged Outcomes to Evaluate Bias in Value-Added Models

By Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff

American Economic Review, May 2016

Value-added (VA) models measure agents' productivity based on the outcomes they produce. The utility of VA models for performance evaluation depends on the extent to which VA estimates are biased by selection. One common method of evaluating bias in VA is...

Fixed Effects, Invariance, and Spatial Variation in Intergenerational Mobility

By Gary Chamberlain

American Economic Review, May 2016

Chetty et al. (2014) document variation across commuting zones in intergenerational mobility. With over 700 commuting zones, the task of estimating place effects involves a high-dimension parameter space. I develop a fixed-effects model along with an orac...

Identity Economics 2016: Where Do Social Distinctions and Norms Come From?

By Rachel E. Kranton

American Economic Review, May 2016

Identity economics provides a framework to analyze economic outcomes by establishing people's identities--not just pecuniary incentives--as primary motivations for choice. The heart of the framework is social difference and norms. This paper engages the e...

Identity-Based Organizations

By Jean-Paul Carvalho

American Economic Review, May 2016

A single club model describes the collective production of both personal and social identity. Personal identity, how one perceives oneself, is formed through a process of cultural transmission. Social identity, how one is perceived by others, takes the fo...

"We Thinking" and Its Consequences

By Robert Akerlof

American Economic Review, May 2016

Increasingly, economists are drawing on concepts from outside economics--such as "norms," "esteem," and "identity"--to model agents' social natures. A key reason for studying such social motivation is to shed light on the conditions that facilitate--or de...

Identity-Driven Cooperation versus Competition

By Dennis J. Snower and Steven J. Bosworth

American Economic Review, May 2016

This paper seeks to extend the domain of identity economics by exploring motivational foundations of in-group cooperation and out-group competition. On this basis, we explore the reflexive interaction between individual economic decisions and social ident...

Option Awareness: The Psychology of What We Consider

By Anuj K. Shah and Jens Ludwig

American Economic Review, May 2016

The standard economic view suggests that people will commit an action if its expected benefits outweigh its costs. But before people weigh the costs and benefits of an action, what affects whether they think of the action in the first place? We argue that...

Beyond Beta-Delta: The Emerging Economics of Personal Plans

By John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, and Joshua Schwartzstein

American Economic Review, May 2016

People make personal plans regarding whether, when, where, and how to undertake certain actions. We discuss three questions related to personal plans. First, what are the effects of plans on behavior? Second, when are plans formed? Third, how do plans dev...

The Psychological Lives of the Poor

By Frank Schilbach, Heather Schofield, and Sendhil Mullainathan

American Economic Review, May 2016

All individuals rely on a fundamental set of mental capacities and functions, or bandwidth, in their economic and non-economic lives. Yet, many factors associated with poverty, such as malnutrition, alcohol consumption, or sleep deprivation, may tax this ...

Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Policy in OECD Countries

By Timothy J. Hatton

American Economic Review, May 2016

Refugees and asylum seekers are only a small proportion of the 60 million forcibly displaced persons. But those seeking asylum in the developed world have received much of the attention as western governments have struggled to develop a policy response. A...

Rethinking Protection of Those Displaced by Humanitarian Crises

By Susan F. Martin

American Economic Review, May 2016

In June 2015, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees announced a landmark event in the history of his organization. UNHCR estimated that there were more refugees and displaced persons than it had counted since its establishment in 1950--almost 60 million w...

Toward an International Migration Regime

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

American Economic Review, May 2016

Few if any issues in public policy are as muddled and contentious as international migration. There is no international regime that establishes standards and principles for national migration policies other than in the case of refugees (migrants escaping ...

The Economic Impact of Syrian Refugees on Host Countries: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Turkey

By Semih Tumen

American Economic Review, May 2016

The Syrian Conflict generated forced immigration from northern Syria to southeastern Turkey. Arrival of refugees resembles a natural experiment, which offers good opportunities to study the economic impact of immigration. I study three main outcomes: labo...

Converging to American: Healthy Immigrant Effect in Children of Immigrants

By Mónica García-Pérez

American Economic Review, May 2016

We analyze children of immigrants' healthy immigrant effect using parental year of arrival and region of birth. Using data from Integrated National Health Interview Survey 2008-2014, we evaluate children of immigrants' health status by using obesity rates...