Highlighted Publications




 

Nelissen and De Witte (2026) examine whether raising the compulsory schooling age from 17 to 18 improves long-term educational and labor market outcomes. They use Dutch administrative microdata tracking individuals from adolescence into adulthood, exploiting a quasi-experimental reform. They find the policy reduced dropout by about 1.3 percentage points and increased high school completion by roughly 0.5 points, with stronger effects for vocational students. By age 31, employ

Singer (2026) examines whether the duration of remote learning in 2020–21 affected student attendance after the pandemic. He uses longitudinal administrative data on nearly one million Michigan students from 2017–18 through 2023–24, combined with district-level measures of remote learning duration. Using difference-in-differences and instrumental variables, he finds that each additional month of remote learning reduced post-pandemic attendance by about 0.46 percentage points.

Najam and Thompson (2026) examine whether adopting a four-day school week affects juvenile crime. They analyze incident-level crime data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System across six states, combined with longitudinal data on school schedule adoption from 2005–2019. Using a difference-in-differences design, they find that four-day school weeks increase juvenile crime by about 12%, driven by a 20% rise in property crime and a 9% rise in violent crime. They also

Bueno, Mawi, Page, and Smith (2026) examine how place-based scholarships affect student borrowing and early academic outcomes. They ask whether receiving the Achieve Atlanta scholarship changes loan use and first-semester performance. Using linked administrative data from Atlanta Public Schools, Achieve Atlanta, and Georgia’s public college systems, they compare recipients to similar non-recipients. They find recipients are 7 percentage points less likely to borrow (18% reduc