Job Market Paper
- “Content Relatability and Standardized Testing: Evidence from Texas.” With Steven Lee. Revise and resubmit at American Economic Review.
- Abstract: One goal of standardized tests is to measure aptitude across heterogeneous students with minimal bias. However, how different students relate to topics or characters that appear in exam content could lead to differential test scores even when aptitude is the same. We study how differential content relatability can impact test scores using item-level data from reading comprehension exams in Texas. Using time-use data and natural language processing techniques, we first build a novel measure of race- and gender-based relatability to topics in the exam’s text passages. A one standard deviation increase in exam-level topic relatability across race predicts a 0.05 standard deviation change in student exam performance, with null effects for gender. We find student test scores improve on passages with a higher share of characters matching either the student’s race or gender. Our estimates suggest that equalizing the relatability of passages in these standardized tests could reduce the Black-white and Hispanic-white test score gaps by up to 9 percent and 10 percent, respectively. We then counterfactually estimate close to 11,000 Black students and 37,000 Hispanic students during our sample period were designated to be at a lower reading comprehension level due to relatability.
Works-in-Progress
- “Sewers and Urbanization in the Developing World.” With Sean McCulloch, Matthew Turner, and Toru Kitagawa. NBER Working Paper #33597.
- Abstract: We investigate the effects of sewer access on neighborhood characteristics in developing world cities. Because it is more difficult to move sewage uphill than downhill, otherwise similar neighborhoods on opposite sides of drainage basin divides may face different costs of sewer access. We exploit this intuition to identify the effect of sewer access by comparing outcomes for neighborhoods on opposite sides of drainage basin divides. We estimate the effect of sewer access on census tract population density, literacy, and income for Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Jordan, and Tanzania. On average, sewer access has a large effect on population density and almost none on demographics. These estimates imply that sewer networks are often as important for the economic geography of cities as transportation networks.
- “What are the welfare effects of removing single-family zoning? Evidence from Oregon.” (Draft available upon request.)
- Abstract: Interpreting price changes from large-scale reforms of zoning laws faces a core challenge: distinguishing externalities of density from supply effects. Purely increasing housing supply via relaxing regulations must result in a decrease in prices. However, increasing density may have an external effect, which may be positive or negative depending on preferences of local homeowners. Distinguishing between the two is essential to understanding the welfare effect. I develop micro-foundations that allow me to leverage a statewide zoning reform in Oregon to identify both supply and external effects in a common policy setting.
- “The builder’s remedy and municipal behavior: Evidence from Massachusetts Chapter 40B.” With Aja Kennedy.
