Amanda Pallais

Small Differences That Matter: Mistakes in Applying to College

In 1997, the ACT increased the number of free score reports it provided to students from three to four, maintaining a

Taking a Chance on College: Is the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship Program a Winner?

6 marginal cost for each additional report. In response to this

Why the Referential Treatment? Evidence from Field Experiments on Referrals

6 cost change, ACT-takers sent many more score reports and applications relative to SAT-takers. They widened the range of colleges they sent scores to, and low-income ACT-takers attended more-selective colleges. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the policy substantially increased low-income students’ expected earnings. This sizable behavioral change in response to such a small cost change suggests that in this setting, small policy perturbations can have large effects on welfare.

Inefficient Hiring in Entry-Level Labor Markets

Most policies seeking to improve high school achievement historically either provided incentives for educators or punished students. Since 1991, however, over a dozen states, comprising approximately a quarter of the nations high school seniors, have implemented broad-based merit scholarship programs that reward students for their high school achievement with college financial aid. This paper analyzes one of these initiatives, the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarships, using individual-level data from the ACT exams. The program did not achieve one of its stated goals, inducing more students to prefer to stay in Tennessee for college, but it did induce large increases in performance on the ACT. Policies that reward students for performance do affect behavior and may be an effective way to improve high school achievement.

Opportunities for Low–Income Students at Top Colleges and Universities: Policy Initiatives and the Distribution of Students

Referred workers are more likely than nonreferred workers to be hired, all else equal. In three field experiments in an online labor market, we examine why. We find that referrals contain positive information about worker performance and persistence that is not contained in workers’ observable characteristics. We also find that referrals perform particularly well when working directly with their referrers. However, we do not find evidence that referrals exert more effort because they believe their performance will affect their relationship with their referrer or their referrer’s position at the firm.