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We suggest that a political leader or a political administration can be described in terms of a public sector entrepreneurship framework. To illustrate, we define the actions of US President Donald Trump’s Administration to refocus the emphasis of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as an innovative public policy initiative. And, we explore empirically the social consequences of those actions in terms of changes in the number of STEM employees at the EPA and the number of attendant innovative scientific publications. We find that declining experienced STEM employees at the EPA during President Trump’s Administration is associated with declining innovative environmental scientific publications. Declining experienced STEM employees at the EPA during President Donald Trump’s Administration is associated with declining innovative environmental scientific publications. A public sector entrepreneur is an individual who champions an innovative public policy. In this paper we propose that President Trump’s Administration’s policies toward the EPA during his administration were innovative, although different from that of previous administrations. These policies sought to reorient the EPA toward industrial and industry-friendly interests which was contrary to the agency’s health and environmental missions. One response to the administration’s new policies was that experienced STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) employees left the EPA. A social consequence of the departure of experienced STEM employees is that the number of environmentally related scientific publications—one indicator of an agency’s innovative activity—from EPA scientists declined. An implication from our empirical findings is that not all public sector entrepreneurial actions are socially desirable; some have potentially detrimental short-run and possible long-run effects on society as a whole.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in education are common as the design allows for an unbiased estimate of the overall impact of a program. As more RCTs are completed, researchers are also noting that an overall average impact may mask substantial variation across sites or groups of individuals. Mixed methods can provide insight and help in unpacking some of the reasons for these variations in impact. This article contributes to the field of mixed methods research by integrating mixed methods into a recently developed conceptual framework for understanding variations in impact. We model the use of this approach within the context of an RCT for online courses that found differences in impact across courses.

This article examines how the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansions affected the sources of health insurance coverage of undergraduate students in the United States. We show that the Affordable Care Act expansions increased the Medicaid coverage of undergraduate students by 5 to 7 percentage points more in expansion states than in nonexpansion states, resulting in 17% of undergraduate students in expansion states being covered by Medicaid postexpansion (up from 9% prior to the expansion). In contrast, the growth in employer and private direct coverage was 1 to 2 percentage points lower postexpansion for students in expansion states compared with nonexpansion states. Our findings demonstrate that policy efforts to expand Medicaid eligibility have been successful in increasing the Medicaid coverage rates for undergraduate students in the United States, but there is evidence of some crowd out after the expansions—that is, some students substituted their private and employer-sponsored coverage for Medicaid.

This study uses nationally representative data for the United States from the Basic Monthly Current Population Survey to document how teachers’ hours of work have changed in 2020 and 2021 relative to typical labor supply levels and to the hours worked by other college-educated professional workers. Controlling for demographics, teachers’ hours decreased early in the pandemic, but throughout the 2020–2021 school year teachers have been working more than usual. The increase is slightly more pronounced for veteran teachers and for females. The findings emphasize the increased demands of the teaching profession during the global pandemic.

This article explores why many public school teachers work substantially more hours than required by contract, given that the elasticity of their earnings with respect to their hours is close to zero. The author introduces a theoretical framework for public-sector employees in which high levels of effort can indicate either altruism (for intrinsically motivated employees) or low productivity (for low-ability employees). Because intrinsically motivated employees derive higher utility from working in the public sector, they are less likely to exit it. Over time, selection makes high levels of effort more strongly predictive of altruism than of low ability. Findings show that teachers with very low levels of experience exhibit little or no relationship between weekly hours and the probability of remaining in teaching. This correlation becomes more positive as teaching experience increases. Similarly, the level of work hours is positively related to self-reported burnout at low levels of experience, but the relationship is reversed for teachers who have been in the profession longer.

We explore the innovative performance of firms resulting from their Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) research-funded projects in terms of the gender dynamics of the firms. Using commercialization as the relevant performance metric, we find that Phase II projects led by a female principal investigator (PI) have greater probability of being commercialized in female-owned firms than in male-owned firms. This result is consistent with the findings from other settings that females tend to perform better when working under a female supervisor.

This paper examines the phenomenon of uncompensated long hours in jobs with pro‐social characteristics and presents evidence that long‐hour wage premiums and occupational social value are substitutes in compensating salaried workers who supply hours exceeding the standard working week. I show that the social value of an occupation—in particular the degree to which jobs involve helping or providing service to others—is inversely related to long‐hour pay. Allowing for heterogeneity in the degree to which workers value their job's helping orientation lets me explore how gender differences in employees’ attitudes toward pro‐social behaviour can explain some of the observed occupational sorting trends and gender differences in long‐hour compensation. Women tend to be more strongly drawn to ‘helping’ occupations and at the same time receive lower long‐hour premiums in these jobs relative to men. I offer a theoretical framework to rationalize the empirical trends.

Asking students to come to class prepared is quite common in undergraduate and graduate education. We use a quasiexperimental design to assess whether requiring undergraduate students in an introductory course to review prior to lecture the material that will be taught in class enhances their understanding of key concepts. We find that requiring rather than recommending preparation before class increases exam scores by about a quarter of a standard deviation, or roughly a third of a letter grade, for students in the second and third quartiles of the ability distribution but has little impact on very high‐ or low‐ability students. We also estimate local average treatment effects, from which we draw a similar conclusion: reviewing the material before lecture benefits students in the middle of the ability distribution but has essentially no impact on the top and bottom quartiles.

The authors study how variations in supervisors’ attitudes toward working with females generate gender differences in workers’ observed career outcomes. The employment records of athletic directors and head coaches in a set of NCAA Division I programs provide longitudinal matched employer–worker data. Supervisors are observed at multiple establishments, which allows the authors to construct a measure of revealed type and to examine its role for the performance and turnover of lower-level employees. The authors observe that the careers of male and female workers progress differently depending on supervisor type in a way that is consistent with a type-based mentoring model. The results suggest that more focus should be placed on managerial attitudes revealed through actions in addition to observable attributes such as gender.

Online courses are a growing part of the community college experience, but many students, particularly minority students or students who are more at-risk, face challenges in passing those courses. This paper presents results from an experimental study of an effort to redesign a set of core introductory online courses to include a set of technology tools and instructional practices designed to improve students' experiences in the online environment. Results from the study showed that treatment students were less likely to withdraw, and minority students, specifically, were more likely to pass the class and to persist to the next year of college.

I examine the relationship between student loans and marital status among individuals considering or pursuing graduate management education. Using data from a panel survey of registrants for the Graduate Management Admission Test, I show that the amount of accumulated student debt is negatively related to the probability of first marriage. The strength of the relationship diminishes with age, more so for women than for men. At the median age for the sample (24 years at test registration), the estimated decrease over a seven-year period is between 3 and 4 percentage points per $10,000 in student debt for men and a percentage point lower in absolute value for women. I use information on reported marriage expectations to show evidence that education expenditures and the amount of debt are correlated with anticipated marital status, but borrowers may not have perfect foresight about the long-term consequences of accumulating student debt.

This paper assesses the R&D performance of nascent and established technology-based small firms that receive a Phase II R&D award from the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Our empirical analysis is based on a two-stage selection probit model, which is used to estimate the probability of commercialization conditional on the Phase II project having not failed. Our model predicts, and our analysis confirms, that nascent firms are more likely to fail in their SBIR-supported R&D endeavors. Further, we find that nascent firms that do not fail have a higher probability of commercializing their developed technology.

The role of gender in entrepreneurship has been thoroughly investigated. However, less is known about gender differences in access to private investment when attempting to develop a new technology. In this paper, we use data collected by the National Research Council of the National Academies to estimate differences between the probability that a female-owned firm and a male-owned firm, both conducting research funded by the Small Business Innovation Research program, will receive private investment funding to help to commercialize the funded technology. We find that female-owned firms are disadvantaged in their access to private investment, especially in the West and Northeast regions of the USA.

Mentoring, and to a greater extent support from high-level administrators, has been shown to decrease worker turnover in general, but little is known about its differential impact on minority workers. Utilizing four waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey, we find that administrative support is most strongly associated with retention for minority teachers working in schools where minorities are underrepresented. This effect is pronounced for teachers new to the profession and those in schools with more students from low-income families or located in rural areas. The results indicate that workplace support is essential in maintaining or growing minority representation in relatively less-diverse organizations.

We introduce the idea that easily inferable demographic characteristics such as gender may not be sufficient to define type in the supervisor-employee mentoring relationship. We use longitudinal data on athletic directors at NCAA Division I programs to identify through observed mobility the propensity of top-level administrators to hire and retain female head coaches, above and beyond an organization's culture. We show that supervisor gender appears to be unrelated to female friendliness in this setting. Overall, our findings indicate that more focus should be placed on the more complex manager type defined by attitudes in addition to attributes.

Numerous studies have examined the enrollment responses of traditional undergraduate students to the introduction of government-provided tuition subsidies, but far less attention has been devoted to the elasticity of demand for graduate education. This paper examines how the tax code and government education policies affect graduate enrollment and persistence rates along with the ways in which students fund their graduate education. Our empirical methodology is based on exogenous variations in the availability of an income tax exemption for employer- provided tuition assistance for graduate courses. We find that graduate attendance among full-time workers age 24-30 is higher when the tax exemption is available, mostly due to higher persistence in public universities and vocational course work. The use of employer aid for individuals enrolled in full-time and public part-time graduate programs also increases. We present some evidence that universities may adjust tuition to capture part of the incidence.

This study establishes empirically a positive but nonlinear relationship between weekly hours and hourly wage growth. For workers who put in over 47 hours per week, 5 extra hours are associated with a 1% increase in annual wage growth. This correlation is not present when hours are lower. The relationship is especially strong for young professionals. Data on promotions provide evidence in support of a job-ladder model that combines higher skill sensitivity of output in higher-level jobs with heterogeneous preferences for leisure. The results can be used to account for part of the gender wage gap.

This paper links inherent mobility to observed schooling choices. A job search model with graduate education predicts that more mobile workers are more likely to enroll in full-time MBA programs. Adding to the literature on employer-sponsored general training, the model predicts that employers are likely to provide tuition assistance to workers who find quits costly. I use a panel survey of GMAT registrants to test some of the empirical implications of the model. I show that observable measures of job attachment are correlated with the probability of attending part-time and, conditional on part-time attendance, with the likelihood of receiving tuition reimbursement.

There is much discussion in the popular press about how consumers adjust their purchase decisions for items from lattes and restaurant meals to which type of meat to purchase for dinner during times of rising fuel prices. 1 While analysts ascribe declines in retail sector profits when fuel prices rise to changes in demand elasticity, most empirical analysis of consumer choice for such daily items abstracts from inter- temporal income effects. Instead, fuel prices are used in demand estimation as exogenous shifters of production costs, and therefore valid instruments for identifying demand parameters. Though introspection and popular press suggest that sharp changes in fuel costs may shift price sensitivity in nonfuel purchases through an income effect, little empirical work has been done to estimate or quantify this effect. 2

By examining how student borrowers fare financially after graduation, we attempt to further the existing knowledge of the costs associated with education debt and the manageability of the typical debt burden. We compare the financial stability of individuals who have borrowed for education to similar individuals who have not. We show that, keeping education constant, more student debt is associated with higher probability of being credit constrained and greater likelihood of declaring bankruptcy, particularly for individuals who accumulate debt but do not complete a Bachelor’s degree. We find evidence that homeownership rates may also be affected by education loans. Controlling for earnings tends to strengthen these relationships, which is consistent with omitted variable bias combined with positive return to student loans.

This paper links a worker's propensity to change jobs to her schooling choices. A model of the choice of graduate management program type based on job search theory predicts that more mobile workers are more likely to enroll in a full-time Master of Business Administration program. The study also adds to the literature on employer-sponsored general training; the model predicts that employers are more likely to provide tuition assistance to workers who find quits costly. I use a four-wave panel survey of GMAT registrants to show that these predictions hold true empirically. Observable characteristics that are correlated with stronger job attachment are also positively correlated with the probability of attending a part-time program and, conditional on part-time attendance, with the likelihood of receiving employer-provided tuition reimbursement.

This study establishes empirically a positive relationship between hours worked per week and growth in hourly wages. A four-wave panel survey of men and women who registered to take the Graduate Management Admission Test between June 1990 and March 1991 is used to show that this relationship is especially strong for young professional workers, but it is also present in a more wide-ranging dataset like the 1979 cohort of the NLSY. I nd the relationship to be nonlinear: in the GMAT Registrant Survey, for workers who put in 48 or more hours per week annual wage growth increases by 2 percent per 10 extra hours worked per week. The average eect is zero when hours are less than 47. The positive eect of hours on wage growth can be accounted for both by a learning-by-doing model with heterogeneous preferences for leisure, and by a model of promotions that combines higher per hour productivity in upper levels of the job ladder with worker heterogeneity. Using data on promotions and training, I provide evidence in support of the job-ladder model.

This paper examines the importance of income effects in purchase decisions for every-day products by analyzing the effect of gasoline prices on grocery expenditures. Using detailed scanner data from a large grocery chain as well as data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), we show that consumers re-allocate their expenditures across and within food-consumption categories in order to offset necessary increases in gasoline expenditures when gasoline prices rise. We show that gasoline expenditures rise one-for-one with gasoline prices, consumers substitute away from food-away-from-home and towards groceries in order to partially offset their increased expenditures on gasoline, and that within grocery category, consumers substitute away from regular shelf-price products and towards promotional items in order to save money on overall grocery expenditures. On average, consumers are able to decrease the net price paid per grocery item by 5-11% in response to a 100% increase in gasoline prices. We find evidence that this consumer substitution effect happens given retail price adjustments due to pass-though of higher gasoline prices into retail prices, by investigating two price indexes; one that uses shelf-prices and one that uses prices net of promotional discounts (net-prices are equal to shelf-prices if there is no discount). We assess the effect of gasoline prices on each of the price indexes, controlling for store-level fixed-effects and regional time trends, finding a 5 percent increase in net prices as a result of a 100 percent increase in gasoline prices. Product prices appear to adjust flexibly with gasoline prices through the size of discounts and promotions, which change weekly (or by-weekly) even though shelf-prices remain stable. Our results show that consumers respond to permanent changes in income from gasoline prices by substituting towards lower-cost food at the grocery store and lower priced items within grocery category. The substitution away from full-priced items towards sale items has implications for microeconomic demand models as well as for macroeconomic inflation measures that typically do not incorporate frequently changing promotional prices.

This paper examines the importance of income effects in purchase decisions for every-day products by analyzing the effect of gasoline prices on grocery expenditures. Using detailed scanner data from a large grocery chain as well as data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), we show that consumers re-allocate their expenditures across and within food-consumption categories in order to offset necessary increases in gasoline expenditures when gasoline prices rise. We show that gasoline expenditures rise one-for-one with gasoline prices, consumers substitute away from food-away-from-home and towards groceries in order to partially offset their increased expenditures on gasoline, and that within grocery category, consumers substitute away from regular shelf-price products and towards promotional items in order to save money on overall grocery expenditures. On average, consumers are able to decrease the net price paid per grocery item by 5-11% in response to a 100% increase in gasoline prices. We find evidence that this consumer substitution effect happens given retail price adjustments due to pass-though of higher gasoline prices into retail prices, by investigating two price indexes; one that uses shelf-prices and one that uses prices net of promotional discounts (net-prices are equal to shelf-prices if there is no discount). We assess the effect of gasoline prices on each of the price indexes, controlling for store-level fixed-effects and regional time trends, finding a 5 percent increase in net prices as a result of a 100 percent increase in gasoline prices. Product prices appear to adjust flexibly with gasoline prices through the size of discounts and promotions, which change weekly (or by-weekly) even though shelf-prices remain stable. Our results show that consumers respond to permanent changes in income from gasoline prices by substituting towards lower-cost food at the grocery store and lower priced items within grocery category. The substitution away from full-priced items towards sale items has implications for microeconomic demand models as well as for macroeconomic inflation measures that typically do not incorporate frequently changing promotional prices.

Using project data from a random sample of Phase II research awards from the National Institutes of Health SBIR program, we estimate the relative probability that woman-owned firms are able to attract private investments to fund the transition of the technology developed under the sponsorship of the SBIR program to an innovation to enter the market. We find that womenowned firms are as much as 16 percentage points less likely to attract private investment dollars compared to male-owned firms, factors excluding the size of the SBIR award held constant. Women-owned firms that received larger awards performed substantially better. Although the SBIR program has a legislated directive to increase the participation of woman-owned firms in the program, our findings suggest that it might not be sufficient to overcome market perceptions about the profitability of such investments actually bringing a developed technology to market.