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This paper explores the effect of extra schooling, induced through compulsory schooling laws, on the likelihood of becoming politically involved in the United States and the United Kingdom. U.S. data come from the annual National Elections Studies and the November Current Population Surveys. U.K. data come from the British General Election Studies and the Eurobarometer Surveys. Results find that educational attainment relates to several measures of political interest and involvement in both countries. For voter turnout, there is a strong, robust relationship between education and voting for the United States, but not for the United Kingdom. This is largely due to differences in voting registration across education groups. Using information on validated voting, results find that misreporting of voter status cannot explain the estimates. Results suggest that the observed drop in voter turnout in the United States from 1964-2000 would have been 10.4-12.3 percentage points greater if high school attainment had stayed at 1964 rates, holding all else constant. However, when conditioning on registration, U.S. results approach U.K. findings. This may indicate that registration rules present a barrier to low-educated citizens' participation. (Contains 33 references.) (SM)

This study estimates the effect of maternal education on birth outcomes using data from the Vital Statistics Natality files for 1970 to 1999. It also assesses the importance of four potential channels through which maternal education may improve birth outcomes: use of prenatal care, smoking behavior, marriage, and fertility. In an effort to account for unobserved characteristics of women that could induce spurious correlation, the study pursues two distinct empirical strategies. First, it constructs panel data by linking women in different years of the Vital Statistics records and examines the effects of changes in education on changes in birth outcomes. Second, it compiles a new data set on openings of two and four year colleges between 1940 and 1990. The study uses data about the availability of colleges in the woman's county in her 17th year as an instrument for maternal education. Findings using the two approaches are similar. Higher maternal education improves infant health, as measured by birthweight and gestational age. It also increases the probability that a new mother is unmarried, reduces fertility, increases use of prenatal care, and reduces smoking, suggesting that these are important pathways for the ultimate effect on health. (Contains 43 references.) (SM)

We evaluate the effects of state-provided financial incentives for biotech companies, which are part of a growing trend of placed-based policies designed to spur innovation clusters. We estimate that the adoption of subsidies for biotech employers by a state raises the number of star biotech scientists in that state by about 15 percent over a three-year period. A 10 percent decline in the user cost of capital induced by an increase in R&D tax incentives raises the number of stars by 22 percent. Most of the gains are due to the relocation of star scientists to adopting states, with limited effect on the productivity of incumbent scientists already in the state. The gains are concentrated among private sector inventors. We uncover little effect of subsidies on academic researchers, consistent with the fact that their incentives are unaffected. Our estimates indicate that the effect on overall employment in the biotech sector is of comparable magnitude to that of star scientists. Consistent with a model where workers are fairly mobile across states, we find limited effects on salaries in the industry. We uncover large effects on employment in the nontraded sector due to a sizable multiplier effect, with the largest impact on employment in construction and retail. Finally, we find mixed evidence of a displacement effect on states that are geographically close, or states that are economically close as measured by migration flows. A bibliography is included. An appendix presents supplemental tables.