Research

Working Papers

The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility  

   October 2018, NBER w25147 (joint with Raj Chetty, Nathan Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, and Sonya R. Porter)   See Also: Opportunity Atlas Interactive Maps, Non-Technical Summary, and Publicly Available Datasets

Explaining Geographic Differences in Young Disability Insurance Rates  

   September 2018 (joint with Maxwell Kellogg, Ithai Lurie, and Magne Mogstad)

Published Papers

Optimal Gerrymandering in a Competitive Environment 

Economic Theory Bulletin July 2020 (joint with Richard Holden) 

Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States  

   Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 135, Issue 3, August 2020, Pages 1567–1633   NBER Paper with Newer Results: The Determinants of Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility: Using Test Scores to Measure Undermatching   Older NBER Version: Mobility Report Cards (joint with Raj Chetty, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan)   See Also: Non-Technical Summary for 2020 Material, Non-Technical Summary for 2017 Material, and Publicly Available Datasets

A Practical Method to Reduce Privacy Loss when Disclosing Statistics Based on Small Samples

   AEA Paper and Proceedings, Vol 119, pp. 414-20, May 2019 (joint with Raj Chetty)   See Also: Longer NBER Version and Slides

Measuring the Impacts of Teachers: Reply to Rothstein

   American Economic Review, Vol. 107(6), pp. 1685-1717, June 2017 (joint with Raj Chetty and Jonah Rockoff)   See Also: Study Website (with executive summary, data, and code)

Using Lagged Outcomes to Evaluate Bias in Value-Added Models

   AEA Paper and Proceedings, Vol 106(5), pp. 393-399, 2016 (joint with Raj Chetty and Jonah Rockoff)   See Also: Study Website (with executive summary, data, and code)

Identification and Inference with Many Invalid Instruments

   Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Vol. 33(4): 474-484, October 2015 (joint with Michal Kolesar, Raj Chetty, Edward Glaeser and Guido Imbens)

Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Students Outcomes in Adulthood

   American Economic Review, 104(9): 2633-2679, September 2014 (joint-lead article) (joint with Raj Chetty and Jonah Rockoff)   See Also: Study Website (with executive summary, data, and code), Old Joint NBER WP 17699 (without drift adjustment), and Slides

Measuring the Impacts of Teacher I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates

   American Economic Review, 104(9): 2593-2632, September 2014 (joint-lead article) (joint with Raj Chetty and Jonah Rockoff)   See Also: Study Website (with executive summary, data, and code), Old Joint NBER WP 17699 (without drift adjustment), and Slides

Active vs. Passive Decisions and Crowd-out in Retirement Savings Accounts: Evidence from Denmark

   Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(3): 1141-1219, August 2014 (joint with Raj Chetty, Soren Leth-Petersen, Torben Heien Nielsen, and Tore Olsen)   See Also: Slides, Online Appendix, and Executive Summary

Using Differences in Knowledge Across Neighborhood to Uncover the Impacts of the EITC on Earnings

   American Economic Review, 103(7): 2683-2721, December 2013 (joint with Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez)   See Also: Web Appendix, Slides, NRP Tabulations, NBER WP 18232 (Longer Version with Complete Results), and Publicly Available Files (Code, Data, and Sharp Bunching Measures by ZIP-3)

How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project STAR

   Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(4): 1593-1660, November 2011 (joint with Raj Chetty, Nate Hilger, Emmanuel Saez, Diane Schanzenbach, and Danny Yagan)   See Also: Slides and Non-Technical Summary

Adjustment Costs, Firm Responses, and Micro vs. Macro Labor Supply Elasticities: Evidence from Danish Tax Records

   Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(2): 749-804, May 2011 (joint with Raj Chetty, Tore Olsen, and Luigi Pistaferri)   See Also: Online Appendix and Program to Calculate Bunching in STATA

Performance Improvement and Performance Dysfunction: An Empirical Examination of Distortionary Impacts of the Emergency Room Wait-Time Target in the English National Health Service

   Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 19(4): 947-966, October 2009 (joint with Steve Kelman)

The Rising Incumbent Advantage: What's Gerrymandering Got To Do With It?

   Journal of Politics, 71(2): 593-611, 2009 (joint with Richard Holden)   See Also: Web Appendix and Redistricting Dataset 

Optimal Gerrymandering: Sometimes Pack but Never Crack

   American Economic Review, 98(1): 113-144, March 2008 (joint with Richard Holden)

The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data

Quarterly Journal of Economics, Forthcoming 2023, (joint with Raj Chetty, Michael Stepner, and the Opportunity Insights Team)See also the Economic Tracker , Slides , and Other Materials

 Policy Papers

Tax Policy and Retirement Savings  

   Chapter in The Economics of Tax Policy, eds. Alan Auerbach and Kent Smetters (Forthcoming, Oxford Press)   Prepared for the Economics of Tax Policy Conference at the Brookings Institute, December 3-4, 2015

Building on What Works: A Proposal to Modernize Retirement Savings  

   The Hamilton Project, Discussion Paper 2015-05 (June 2015)

Predicting Medicare Cost Growth

   Chapter in Improving Health Cost Projections for the Medicare Population   Committee on National Statistics and National Research Council Workshop Summary, 2010

Older Papers

The Incidence of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit: Using Asset Prices to Assess its Impact on Drug Makers

   January 2011

Effort As Investment: Analyzing the Response to Incentives

   March 2011, (revise and resubmit at AEJ: Public Policy) (joint with Steven Kelman)