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About the Author(s)

Joshua Angrist Profile2.jpg

Joshua Angrist is a Research Associate in the NBER's Programs on Children, Education, and Labor Studies, and a Professor of Economics at MIT. A dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, he taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before coming to MIT. He holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and also spent time as an undergraduate studying at the London School of Economics and as a Masters student at Hebrew University. He completed his Ph.D. in Economics at Princeton in 1989 and his first academic job was as an Assistant Professor at Harvard from 1989-91.

Angrist's research interests include the effects of school inputs and organization on student achievement, the impact of education and social programs on the labor market, immigration, labor market regulation and institutions, and econometric methods for program and policy evaluation. Although many of his papers use data from other countries, he does not especially like to travel and prefers to get the data in the mail. He is also a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a Co-editor of the Journal of Labor Economics.

Angrist has a long-standing interesting in public policy. In addition to his academic work, he has worked as a consultant to the U.S. Social Security Administration, The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, and for the Israeli government after the Oslo peace negotiations in 1994. He lives in Brookline with his wife Mira, and their two children, Adie and Noam. The Angrist family enjoy activities like hiking, skiing, skating, sailing, and eating.

Endnotes

1. M. Dynarski and P. Gleason, How Can We Help? What Have We Learned from Evaluations of Federal Dropout-Prevention Program, Mathematica Policy Research report 8014-140, Princeton, NJ, June 1998.   Go to ⤴︎
2. J. D. Angrist and V. Lavy, "The Effect of High School Matriculation Awards" Evidence from Randomized Trials,' NBER Working Paper 9389, December 2002. Go to ⤴︎
3. See P. Glewwe, N. Ilias, and M. Kremer, "Teacher Incentives," NBER Working Paper 9671, May 2003, for a recent randomized trial of teacher incentives in Kenya. Go to ⤴︎
4. J. D. Angrist, E. P. Bettinger, E. Bloom, E. King, and M. Kremer, "Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment," NBER Working Paper 8343, June 2001, and in American Economic Review, 92 (5) (December 2002), pp. 1535-58. Go to ⤴︎
5. Evidence on voucher effects for the United States has been more mixed. Two studies involving randomization are Alan B. Krueger and P. Zhu, "Another Look at the New York City Voucher Experiment," NBER Working Paper 9418, January 2003 and C. E. Rouse, "Private School Vouchers and Student Achievement: An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113 (2) (May 1998). C. M. Hoxby, "Does Competition Among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers?" American Economic Review, 90 (5) (December 2000), pp. 1209-38 is a quasi-experimental study of school choice. In work in progress, J. B. Cullen, S. D. Levitt, and B. A. Jacob are using lotteries to study school choice in the Chicago public schools in, "The Impact of School Choice on Enrollment and Achievement: Evidence from over 1000 Lotteries," manuscript, 2003 (forthcoming as an NBER Working Paper). Go to ⤴︎
6. J. D. Angrist and K. Lang, "How Important are Classroom Peer Effects? Evidence from Boston's METCO Program," NBER Working Paper 9263, October 2002. Go to ⤴︎
7. J. D. Angrist and V. Lavy, "New Evidence on Classroom Computers and Pupil Learning," The Economic Journal, 112 (October 2002), pp. 735-65. Go to ⤴︎
8. My MIT colleagues Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo are currently running a randomized trial of CAI in India. Go to ⤴︎
9. J. D. Angrist and V. Lavy, "Using Maimonides' Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Student Achievement," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114 (2) (May 1999), pp. 533-75. Go to ⤴︎
10. A. B. Krueger, "Experimental Estimates of Education Production Functions," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 104 (1999) pp. 497-532. But see also C. M. Hoxby, "Does Competition Among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers?, " which finds little evidence of a class size effect using quasi-experimental methods to analyze data from Connecticut. Go to ⤴︎
11. J. D. Angrist and J. Guryan, "Does Teacher Testing Raise Teacher Quality? Evidence from State Certification Requirements," NBER Working Paper 9545, March 2003. Go to ⤴︎
12. J. D. Angrist and A. B. Krueger, "Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings?" Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106 (November 1991), and "The Effect of Age at School Entry on Educational Attainment: An Application of Instrumental Variables with Moments from Two Samples," Journal of the American Statistical Association, (June 1992). Go to ⤴︎
13. J. D. Angrist and D. Acemoglu, "How Large are the Social Returns to Education? Evidence from Compulsory Attendance Laws," NBER Macro Annual, 15, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. Go to ⤴︎
14. J. D. Angrist, "The Economic Returns to Schooling in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," American Economic Review, 85 (5) (December 1995), pp. 1065-87. A related and more recent study in this spirit is E. Duflo, "The Medium Run Effects of Educational Expansion: Evidence from a Large School Construction Program in Indonesia," NBER Working Paper 8710, January 2002.   Go to ⤴︎
15. J. D. Angrist and V. Lavy, "The Effect of a Change in Language of Instruction on the Returns to Schooling in Morocco," Journal of Labor Economics, 15 (January 1997) S48-S76. Go to ⤴︎

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