Jonathan Guryan's Research

Curriculum Vitae (updated 2/1/10)

 

Journal Articles and associated Working Papers:

 

·            “Birth Cohort and the Black-White Achievement Gap: The Roles of Access and Health Soon After Birth” (joint with Kenneth Chay and Bhash Mazumder). NBER WP 15078. [Revise and resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics .]

 

·            (Article summarizing the research in the Wall Street Journal, 10/8/09)

 

·            “Sexism and Women’s Labor Market Outcomes” (joint with Kerwin Charles and Jessica Pan).

 

·            “Prejudice and Wages: An Empirical Assessment of Becker’s The Economics of Discrimination” (Journal of Political Economy, October 2008, 116(5), joint with Kerwin Charles). 

 

·            “Prejudice and the Economics of Discrimination” (NBER WP 13661, December 2007, joint with Kerwin Charles).

 

·            “Taste-based discrimination” The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Online Edition. Eds. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (joint with Kerwin Charles).

 

·            “Desegregation and Black Dropout Rates” (American Economic Review, September 2004, 94(4), pp. 919-943).

 

·            “Gambling at Lucky Stores: Empirical Evidence from State Lottery Sales” (American Economic Review, March 2008, 98(1), pp. 458-473, joint with Melissa S. Kearney).

 

·            “Is Lottery Gambling Addictive?” [Forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, joint with Melissa S. Kearney].

 

·            “Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments” (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2009, 1(4), pp. 34-68, joint with Matt Notowidigdo and Kory Kroft).

 

·            "The Impact of Internet Subsidies in Public Schools" (Review of Economics and Statistics, May 2006, 88(2), pp. 336-347, joint with Austan Goolsbee).

 

·            “Parental Education and Parental Time with Children” (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2008, 22(3), pp. 23-46, joint with Erik Hurst and Melissa S. Kearney).

 

·            “Using Technology to Explore Social Networks and Mechanisms Underlying Peer Effects in Classrooms” (Developmental Psychology, March 2008, 44(2), pp. 355-364, joint with Brian Jacob, Eric Klopfer and Jennifer Groff).

 

·            “Teacher Testing, Teacher Education and Teacher Characteristics” (American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May 2004, 94(2), pp. 241-246, Joint with Joshua D. Angrist).

 

·            "Does Teacher Testing Raise Teacher Quality? Evidence from State Certification Requirements” (Economics of Education Review, October 2008, 27(5), pp. 483-503, joint with Joshua D. Angrist).

 

·            “Climate Change and Birthweight” American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, May 2009, 99(2), pp. 211-217, joint with Olivier Deschenes and Michael Greenstone).

 

·            “The Efficacy of a Voluntary Summer Book Reading Intervention for Low-Income Latino Children from Language Minority Families: A Replication Experiment,” [Forthcoming, Journal of Educational Psychology, joint with James Kim].

 

·            "Does Money Matter? Estimates from Education Finance Reform in Massachusetts"

 

·            “The Race Between Education and Technology: A Review Article” Journal of Human Capital, Summer 2009, 3(2): 177-196.

 

Work in Progress:

 

·            “Birth Cohort and Black-White Earnings, Education and Disability Gaps: The Further Effects of Access and Health Soon After Birth” (joint with Kenneth Y. Chay and Bhash Mazumder).

 

·            “The Economics of Discrimination,” for the Annual Review of Economics (joint with Kerwin Charles).

 

·            “Estimating Employment Separation Hazards Accounting for Individual Heterogeneity,” (joint with Mathis Wagner).

 

·            “Preventing Truancy in Urban Schools through Provision of Social Services by Truancy Officers: An Experimental Evaluation” (joint with Jens Ludwig and Phil Cook).

 

·            “Youth Violence Prevention in Milwaukee through Enhanced Truancy Enforcement,” (joint with Jens Ludwig, Phil Cook and Mallory O’Brien).

 

·            “A Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Delinquent Youth: Effects on Academic Performance and Recidivism” (joint with Kenneth Dodge, Jeff Grogger, Jens Ludwig, and Mike McCloskey).

 

 

 

“Birth Cohort and the Black-White Achievement Gap:

The Role of Access and Health Soon After Birth”

(joint with Kenneth Chay and Bhash Mazumder)

 

One literature documents a significant, black-white gap in average test scores, while another finds a substantial narrowing of the gap during the 1980’s, and stagnation in convergence after.  We use two data sources – the Long Term Trends NAEP and AFQT scores for the universe of applicants to the U.S. military between 1976 and 1991 – to show: 1) the 1980’s convergence is due to relative improvements across successive cohorts of blacks born between 1963 and the early 1970’s and not a secular narrowing in the gap over time; and 2) the across-cohort gains were concentrated among blacks in the South.  We then demonstrate that the timing and variation across states in the AFQT convergence closely tracks racial convergence in measures of health and hospital access in the years immediately following birth.  We show that the AFQT convergence is highly correlated with post-neonatal mortality rates and not with neonatal mortality and low birth weight rates, and that this result cannot be explained by schooling desegregation and changes in family background.  We conclude that investments in health through increased access at very early ages have large, long-term effects on achievement, and that the integration of hospitals during the 1960’s affected the test performance of black teenagers in the 1980’s.

 

“Prejudice and the Economics of Discrimination”
(joint with Kerwin Charles)

This paper tests the predictions about the relationship between racial prejudice and racial wage gaps from Becker’s (1957) seminal work on employer discrimination – something which has not previously been done in the large economics discrimination literature. Using rich data on racial prejudice from the General Social Survey, we find strong support for all of the key predictions from Becker about the relationship between prejudice and racial wage gaps.  In particular, we show that, relative to white wages, black wages: (a) vary negatively with a measure of the prejudice of the “marginal” white in a state; (b) vary negatively with the prejudice in the lower tail of the prejudice distribution, but are unaffected by the prejudice of the most prejudiced persons in a state; and (c) vary negatively with the fraction of a state that is black.  We show that these results are robust to a variety of extensions, including directly controlling for racial skill quality differences and instrumental variables estimates.  We present some initial evidence to show that racial wage gaps are larger the more racially integrated is a state’s workforce, also as Becker’s model predicts.  The paper also briefly discusses familiar criticisms and extensions of the standard Becker model, including an argument of our own which, like some recent work, shows that the model’s main predictions can be shown theoretically to survive the effects of long run competition.

 

 

“Peer Effects in the Workplace:

Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments”

(joint with Matt Notowidigdo and Kory Kroft)

 

This paper uses the random assignment of playing partners in professional golf tournaments to test for peer effects in the workplace. We find no evidence that the ability of playing partners affects the performance of professional golfers, contrary to recent evidence on peer effects in the workplace from laboratory experiments, grocery scanners, and soft-fruit pickers. In our preferred specification, we can rule out peer effects larger than 0.03 stroke for a one stroke increase in playing partners' ability. We offer several explanations for our contrasting findings: that workers seek to avoid responding to social incentives when financial incentives are strong; that there is heterogeneity in how susceptible individuals are to social effects and that those who are able to avoid them are more likely to advance to elite professional labor markets; and that workers learn with professional experience not to be affected by social forces. We view our results as complementary to the existing studies of peer effects in the workplace and as a first step towards explaining how these social effects vary across labor markets, across individuals and with changes in the form of incentives faced. In addition to the empirical results on peer effects in the workplace, we also point out that many typical peer effects regressions are biased because individuals cannot be their own peers, and suggest a simple correction.

 

“Desegregation and Black Dropout Rates”

 

In 1954 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that separate schools for black and white children were "inherently unequal." This paper studies whether the desegregation plans of the next 30 years in fact benefited the black students for whom the plans were designed. Analysis of data from the 1970 and 1980 censuses suggests that desegregation plans of the 1970's reduced the high school dropout rates of blacks by one to three percentage points during this decade. Desegregation plans can account for about half of the decline in dropout rates of blacks between 1970 and 1980. A similar analysis suggests that desegregation plans had no effect on the dropout rates of whites. The results are robust to controls for time-varying region and family income effects, as well as to tests for selective migration, though mean reversion may account for some portion of the larger estimated effects. Further investigation of conditions in segregated schools in 1970 suggests that peer effects explain at least some of the decline in the dropout rates of blacks due to desegregation plans.

 

“Gambling at Lucky Stores: Empirical Evidence from State Lottery Sales”
(joint with Melissa S. Kearney)

 

We show that the week after selling a large-prize Texas Lotto winning ticket, a retailer experiences a 12 to 38 percent relative increase in ticket sales. Some increase persists for up to 40 weeks. We document that the sales response increases with jackpot size and is larger in areas with more economically disadvantaged populations. Sales patterns across games and across retailers are not consistent with most advertising explanations. Furthermore, response patterns are not consistent with representativeness-based explanations for the hot hand or gambler's fallacy; we suggest an alternative explanation for the observed "lucky store" effect.

 

“The Impact of Internet Subsidies in Public Schools”
(joint with Austan Goolsbee)

 

In an effort to alleviate the perceived growth of a digital divide, the U.S. government enacted a major subsidy for Internet and communications investment in schools starting in 1998. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of the subsidy-known as the E-Rate-on Internet investment in California public schools. The program subsidized spending by 20-90 percent, depending on school characteristics. Using new data on school technology usage in every school in California from 1996 to 2000 as well as application data from the E-Rate program, the results indicate that the subsidy did succeed in significantly increasing Internet investment. The implied first-dollar price elasticity of demand for Internet investment is between -0.9 and -2.2 and the greatest sensitivity shows up among urban schools and schools with large black and Hispanic student populations. Rural and predominantly white and Asian schools show much less sensitivity. Overall, by the final year of the sample, there were about 66 percent more Internet classrooms than there would have been without the subsidy. Schools' use of the Internet was trending upward even without the subsidy, though. We estimate that the program accelerated the spread of the Internet by about 4 years. Using a variety of test score results, however, it is clear that the success of the E-Rate program, at least so far, has been restricted to the increase in access. The increase in Internet connections has had no measurable impact on any measure of student achievement.

 

“Teacher Testing, Teacher Education and Teacher Characteristics”
(Joint with Joshua D. Angrist)

 

“Does Teacher Testing Raise Teacher Quality?
Evidence from State Certification Requirements”
(Joint with Joshua D. Angrist)

 

The education reform movement includes efforts to raise teacher quality through stricter certification and licensing provisions.  Most US states now require public school teachers to pass a standardized test such as the National Teacher Examination.  Although any barrier to entry is likely to raise wages in the affected occupation, the theoretical effects of such requirements on teacher quality are ambiguous.  Teacher testing places a floor on whatever skills are measured by the required test, but testing is also costly for applicants.  These costs shift teacher supply to the left and may be especially likely to deter high-quality applicants from teaching in the public schools.  We use the Schools and Staffing Survey to estimate the effect of state teacher testing requirements on teacher wages and teacher quality as measured by educational background.  The results suggest that state-mandated teacher testing increases teacher wages with no corresponding increase in quality.

 

“Does Money Matter?
Estimates from Education Finance Reform in Massachusetts”

 

Improving the effectiveness of public schools remains one of the most important public policy goals in the U.S.  There is great debate, however, whether the marginal dollar spent in U.S. public schools is productive.  This paper examines the effectiveness of public school spending in the context of a recent effort to equalize funding across school districts within Massachusetts.  This equalization scheme is viewed both as a policy-relevant setting for the empirical work and as a source of exogenous variation in state aid.  The results suggest districts that received additional state funding increased spending on classroom-related activities, and specifically on teachers.  Using state aid formulas as instruments, I find that increases in per-pupil spending led to significant increases in math, reading, science, and social studies test scores for 4th- and 8th-grade students.  The magnitudes imply a $1,000 increase in per-pupil spending leads to about a third to a half of a standard-deviation increase in average test scores.  It is noted that the state aid driving the estimates is targeted to under-funded school districts, which may have atypical returns to additional expenditures.

 

 

 

 

 Jonathan Guryan's Research

Curriculum Vitae (updated 2/1/10)

 

Journal Articles and associated Working Papers:

 

¨         “Birth Cohort and the Black-White Achievement Gap: The Roles of Access and Health Soon After Birth” (joint with Kenneth Chay and Bhash Mazumder). NBER WP 15078. [Revise and resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics .]

 

·            (Article summarizing the research in the Wall Street Journal, 10/8/09)

 

¨         “Sexism and Women’s Labor Market Outcomes” (joint with Kerwin Charles and Jessica Pan).

 

¨         “Prejudice and Wages: An Empirical Assessment of Becker’s The Economics of Discrimination” (Journal of Political Economy, October 2008, 116(5), joint with Kerwin Charles). 

 

·            “Prejudice and the Economics of Discrimination” (NBER WP 13661, December 2007, joint with Kerwin Charles).

 

¨         “Taste-based discrimination” The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Online Edition. Eds. Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (joint with Kerwin Charles).

 

¨         “Desegregation and Black Dropout Rates” (American Economic Review, September 2004, 94(4), pp. 919-943).

 

¨         “Gambling at Lucky Stores: Empirical Evidence from State Lottery Sales” (American Economic Review, March 2008, 98(1), pp. 458-473, joint with Melissa S. Kearney).

 

¨         “Is Lottery Gambling Addictive?” [Forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, joint with Melissa S. Kearney].

 

¨         “Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments” (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2009, 1(4), pp. 34-68, joint with Matt Notowidigdo and Kory Kroft).

 

¨         "The Impact of Internet Subsidies in Public Schools" (Review of Economics and Statistics, May 2006, 88(2), pp. 336-347, joint with Austan Goolsbee).

 

¨         “Parental Education and Parental Time with Children” (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2008, 22(3), pp. 23-46, joint with Erik Hurst and Melissa S. Kearney).

 

¨         “Using Technology to Explore Social Networks and Mechanisms Underlying Peer Effects in Classrooms” (Developmental Psychology, March 2008, 44(2), pp. 355-364, joint with Brian Jacob, Eric Klopfer and Jennifer Groff).

 

¨         “Teacher Testing, Teacher Education and Teacher Characteristics” (American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May 2004, 94(2), pp. 241-246, Joint with Joshua D. Angrist).

 

¨         "Does Teacher Testing Raise Teacher Quality? Evidence from State Certification Requirements” (Economics of Education Review, October 2008, 27(5), pp. 483-503, joint with Joshua D. Angrist).

 

¨         “Climate Change and Birthweight” American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, May 2009, 99(2), pp. 211-217, joint with Olivier Deschenes and Michael Greenstone).

 

¨         “The Efficacy of a Voluntary Summer Book Reading Intervention for Low-Income Latino Children from Language Minority Families: A Replication Experiment,” [Forthcoming, Journal of Educational Psychology, joint with James Kim].

 

¨         "Does Money Matter? Estimates from Education Finance Reform in Massachusetts"

 

¨         “The Race Between Education and Technology: A Review Article” Journal of Human Capital, Summer 2009, 3(2): 177-196.

 

Work in Progress:

 

·             “Birth Cohort and Black-White Earnings, Education and Disability Gaps: The Further Effects of Access and Health Soon After Birth” (joint with Kenneth Y. Chay and Bhash Mazumder).

 

·             “The Economics of Discrimination,” for the Annual Review of Economics (joint with Kerwin Charles).

 

·             “Estimating Employment Separation Hazards Accounting for Individual Heterogeneity,” (joint with Mathis Wagner).

 

·             “Preventing Truancy in Urban Schools through Provision of Social Services by Truancy Officers: An Experimental Evaluation” (joint with Jens Ludwig and Phil Cook).

 

·             “Youth Violence Prevention in Milwaukee through Enhanced Truancy Enforcement,” (joint with Jens Ludwig, Phil Cook and Mallory O’Brien).

 

·             “A Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Delinquent Youth: Effects on Academic Performance and Recidivism” (joint with Kenneth Dodge, Jeff Grogger, Jens Ludwig, and Mike McCloskey).

 

 

 

“Birth Cohort and the Black-White Achievement Gap:

The Role of Access and Health Soon After Birth”

(joint with Kenneth Chay and Bhash Mazumder)

 

One literature documents a significant, black-white gap in average test scores, while another finds a substantial narrowing of the gap during the 1980’s, and stagnation in convergence after.  We use two data sources – the Long Term Trends NAEP and AFQT scores for the universe of applicants to the U.S. military between 1976 and 1991 – to show: 1) the 1980’s convergence is due to relative improvements across successive cohorts of blacks born between 1963 and the early 1970’s and not a secular narrowing in the gap over time; and 2) the across-cohort gains were concentrated among blacks in the South.  We then demonstrate that the timing and variation across states in the AFQT convergence closely tracks racial convergence in measures of health and hospital access in the years immediately following birth.  We show that the AFQT convergence is highly correlated with post-neonatal mortality rates and not with neonatal mortality and low birth weight rates, and that this result cannot be explained by schooling desegregation and changes in family background.  We conclude that investments in health through increased access at very early ages have large, long-term effects on achievement, and that the integration of hospitals during the 1960’s affected the test performance of black teenagers in the 1980’s.

 

“Prejudice and the Economics of Discrimination”
(joint with Kerwin Charles)

This paper tests the predictions about the relationship between racial prejudice and racial wage gaps from Becker’s (1957) seminal work on employer discrimination – something which has not previously been done in the large economics discrimination literature. Using rich data on racial prejudice from the General Social Survey, we find strong support for all of the key predictions from Becker about the relationship between prejudice and racial wage gaps.  In particular, we show that, relative to white wages, black wages: (a) vary negatively with a measure of the prejudice of the “marginal” white in a state; (b) vary negatively with the prejudice in the lower tail of the prejudice distribution, but are unaffected by the prejudice of the most prejudiced persons in a state; and (c) vary negatively with the fraction of a state that is black.  We show that these results are robust to a variety of extensions, including directly controlling for racial skill quality differences and instrumental variables estimates.  We present some initial evidence to show that racial wage gaps are larger the more racially integrated is a state’s workforce, also as Becker’s model predicts.  The paper also briefly discusses familiar criticisms and extensions of the standard Becker model, including an argument of our own which, like some recent work, shows that the model’s main predictions can be shown theoretically to survive the effects of long run competition.

 

 

“Peer Effects in the Workplace:

Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments”

(joint with Matt Notowidigdo and Kory Kroft)

 

This paper uses the random assignment of playing partners in professional golf tournaments to test for peer effects in the workplace. We find no evidence that the ability of playing partners affects the performance of professional golfers, contrary to recent evidence on peer effects in the workplace from laboratory experiments, grocery scanners, and soft-fruit pickers. In our preferred specification, we can rule out peer effects larger than 0.03 stroke for a one stroke increase in playing partners' ability. We offer several explanations for our contrasting findings: that workers seek to avoid responding to social incentives when financial incentives are strong; that there is heterogeneity in how susceptible individuals are to social effects and that those who are able to avoid them are more likely to advance to elite professional labor markets; and that workers learn with professional experience not to be affected by social forces. We view our results as complementary to the existing studies of peer effects in the workplace and as a first step towards explaining how these social effects vary across labor markets, across individuals and with changes in the form of incentives faced. In addition to the empirical results on peer effects in the workplace, we also point out that many typical peer effects regressions are biased because individuals cannot be their own peers, and suggest a simple correction.

 

“Desegregation and Black Dropout Rates”

 

In 1954 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that separate schools for black and white children were "inherently unequal." This paper studies whether the desegregation plans of the next 30 years in fact benefited the black students for whom the plans were designed. Analysis of data from the 1970 and 1980 censuses suggests that desegregation plans of the 1970's reduced the high school dropout rates of blacks by one to three percentage points during this decade. Desegregation plans can account for about half of the decline in dropout rates of blacks between 1970 and 1980. A similar analysis suggests that desegregation plans had no effect on the dropout rates of whites. The results are robust to controls for time-varying region and family income effects, as well as to tests for selective migration, though mean reversion may account for some portion of the larger estimated effects. Further investigation of conditions in segregated schools in 1970 suggests that peer effects explain at least some of the decline in the dropout rates of blacks due to desegregation plans.

 

“Gambling at Lucky Stores: Empirical Evidence from State Lottery Sales”
(joint with Melissa S. Kearney)

 

We show that the week after selling a large-prize Texas Lotto winning ticket, a retailer experiences a 12 to 38 percent relative increase in ticket sales. Some increase persists for up to 40 weeks. We document that the sales response increases with jackpot size and is larger in areas with more economically disadvantaged populations. Sales patterns across games and across retailers are not consistent with most advertising explanations. Furthermore, response patterns are not consistent with representativeness-based explanations for the hot hand or gambler's fallacy; we suggest an alternative explanation for the observed "lucky store" effect.

 

“The Impact of Internet Subsidies in Public Schools”
(joint with Austan Goolsbee)

 

In an effort to alleviate the perceived growth of a digital divide, the U.S. government enacted a major subsidy for Internet and communications investment in schools starting in 1998. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of the subsidy-known as the E-Rate-on Internet investment in California public schools. The program subsidized spending by 20-90 percent, depending on school characteristics. Using new data on school technology usage in every school in California from 1996 to 2000 as well as application data from the E-Rate program, the results indicate that the subsidy did succeed in significantly increasing Internet investment. The implied first-dollar price elasticity of demand for Internet investment is between -0.9 and -2.2 and the greatest sensitivity shows up among urban schools and schools with large black and Hispanic student populations. Rural and predominantly white and Asian schools show much less sensitivity. Overall, by the final year of the sample, there were about 66 percent more Internet classrooms than there would have been without the subsidy. Schools' use of the Internet was trending upward even without the subsidy, though. We estimate that the program accelerated the spread of the Internet by about 4 years. Using a variety of test score results, however, it is clear that the success of the E-Rate program, at least so far, has been restricted to the increase in access. The increase in Internet connections has had no measurable impact on any measure of student achievement.

 

“Teacher Testing, Teacher Education and Teacher Characteristics”
(Joint with Joshua D. Angrist)

 

“Does Teacher Testing Raise Teacher Quality?
Evidence from State Certification Requirements”
(Joint with Joshua D. Angrist)

 

The education reform movement includes efforts to raise teacher quality through stricter certification and licensing provisions.  Most US states now require public school teachers to pass a standardized test such as the National Teacher Examination.  Although any barrier to entry is likely to raise wages in the affected occupation, the theoretical effects of such requirements on teacher quality are ambiguous.  Teacher testing places a floor on whatever skills are measured by the required test, but testing is also costly for applicants.  These costs shift teacher supply to the left and may be especially likely to deter high-quality applicants from teaching in the public schools.  We use the Schools and Staffing Survey to estimate the effect of state teacher testing requirements on teacher wages and teacher quality as measured by educational background.  The results suggest that state-mandated teacher testing increases teacher wages with no corresponding increase in quality.

 

“Does Money Matter?
Estimates from Education Finance Reform in Massachusetts”

 

Improving the effectiveness of public schools remains one of the most important public policy goals in the U.S.  There is great debate, however, whether the marginal dollar spent in U.S. public schools is productive.  This paper examines the effectiveness of public school spending in the context of a recent effort to equalize funding across school districts within Massachusetts.  This equalization scheme is viewed both as a policy-relevant setting for the empirical work and as a source of exogenous variation in state aid.  The results suggest districts that received additional state funding increased spending on classroom-related activities, and specifically on teachers.  Using state aid formulas as instruments, I find that increases in per-pupil spending led to significant increases in math, reading, science, and social studies test scores for 4th- and 8th-grade students.  The magnitudes imply a $1,000 increase in per-pupil spending leads to about a third to a half of a standard-deviation increase in average test scores.  It is noted that the state aid driving the estimates is targeted to under-funded school districts, which may have atypical returns to additional expenditures.