Assistant Professor, Economics and IBES
My research examines several aspects of the economics of education. In one paper, I examine psychometric methods to improve the comparability of test score measurements across different countries that administer different standardized tests. The test score "Rosetta Stone" that we develop sheds light on the global learning distribution, and the methods can be applied to a host of other settings such as linking test scores across grades to measure long-term effects of good teachers disentangling fade out from exam changes and comparing effect sizes across different interventions. In a second paper, I study how college students form beliefs about the types of jobs they will hold after they graduate depending on which major they choose, and document substantial stereotyping, that when corrected impacts which classes they choose. I have several additional education papers I expect to release this spring. One examines the microfoundations of peer pressure, using social network, survey data, and an experiment in Florida to show that students misperceive norms about studying. A second examines the long-run effects of a school voucher experiment in Delhi, India, studying the impacts of private schools. A third examines mismatch in college application decisions in the U.S. and measures the role of beliefs in explaining these patterns.
