This paper presents estimates of the monetary return to quality in U.S. graduate education. These estimates control for student cognitive ability and self-selection across award level, program quality, and field-of-study. In most program types, there are not significant returns to either graduate degree completion or program quality. The important exceptions include master's programs in the health sciences, where simple completion increases student earnings, and in MBA and professional degree programs, where program quality has a significant positive influence on earnings. I also explore the job characteristics that predict greater earnings among students with tertiary education, and I estimate the returns to quality in terms of non-monetary job benefits. 

Women are less likely than men to earn degrees from high-quality post-baccalaureate programs, and this tendency has been growing over time. I show that, aside from the biomedical sciences, this can not be explained by changes in the type of program where women tend to earn degrees. Instead, sorting by quality within field is the main contributor to the growing gap. Most of this sorting is due to the initial choice in which program type to apply to. No gender differences arise in terms of enrollment or attrition choices, and admissions committees in high-quality post-baccalaureate programs appear to favor women. 

The issue of same-sex marriage legalization is increasingly part of the national political dialogue. This legalization would have a number of economic impacts, one of the most direct being a change in income tax payments, through the so-called marriage penalty. I estimate the effects of same-sex marriage legalization on federal income tax revenue. These estimates rely critically on the responsiveness of labor supply and marital choice to changes in the tax code. I present new evidence on both topics using changes in taxation generated from the 2003 Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act. In addition, I propose a novel measure of the marriage penalty that incorporates the fact that agents will respond optimally to changes in marginal tax rates within the household.