Rey Hernández-Julián

The Effects of Intrauterine Malnutrition on Birth and Fertility Outcomes: Evidence From the 1974 Bangladesh Famine

This article uses the Bangladesh famine of 1974 as a natural experiment to estimate the impact of intrauterine malnutrition on sex of the child and infant mortality. In addition, we estimate the impact of malnutrition on post-famine pregnancy outcomes. Using the 1996 Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Survey (MHSS), we find that women who were pregnant during the famine were less likely to have male children. Moreover, children who were in utero during the most severe period of the Bangladesh famine were 32 % more likely to die within one month of birth compared with their siblings who were not in utero during the famine. Finally, we estimate the impacts of the famine on subsequent pregnancy outcomes. Controlling for pre-famine fertility, we find that women who were pregnant during the famine experienced a higher number of stillbirths in the post-famine years. This increase appears to be driven by an excess number of male stillbirths.

Targeting Teaching: Does the Medium Matter? Online versus Paper Coursework

If individuals process information differently when it is accessed electronically rather than on paper, then the transition from paper to electronic text may affect learning and retention. Using a randomized experiment, we compare learning outcomes of economics students who use electronic teaching tools with students who access the same material on paper. We find that students who submit homework online complete more assignments but have lower classroom attendance rates. However, there is no effect on exam scores. This suggests that while an electronic medium may enable instructional material to be accessed more easily, it does not significantly impact learning.

NEGATIVE PUBLICITY AND CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

Between 1990 and 2007, the number of Catholic schools in the United States decreased by 14% and enrollment diminished by 7%. We generate two measures of publicity of sexual abuse at the diocesan level - public disclosure and news coverage. Dioceses with higher rates of negative publicity had a larger decline in both the number of Catholic schools and overall Catholic school enrollment. We estimate that publicity arising from sexual offenders within the Church explains 5% of the decline in the availability of Catholic schooling.

Transfer College Quality and Student Performance

We examine how students who transfer credit for an introductory-level course from schools of varying quality perform in a subsequent intermediate-level course, holding constant many student characteristics. We measure college quality by the percent of students admitted, the student faculty ratio, listed tuition, the percentage of professors with Ph.D.s, and SAT scores. Students taking introductory courses at higher quality institutions earn higher grades in their intermediate courses than students transferring from lower quality institutions. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that, for the average student, the benefit from attending a higher quality institution is more than worth the higher tuition. Eastern Economic Journal (2008) 34, 172–189. doi:10.1057/palgrave.eej.9050010

Gender and Corruption: A Panel Data Analysis

International comparisons have shown that countries with higher rates of female participation in government also have lower levels of corruption. A cross-sectional analysis of the U.S. states finds a similar result. This result may be due to omitted variable bias - an unobserved characteristic is correlated to both corruption and the level of women in government. We use a panel of U.S. states over time and add fixed effects to control for these unobservables and find no significant relationship between women and government corruption.

Student Appearance and Academic Performance

Studies have shown that attractive people have higher earnings. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that physical attractiveness proxies for unobserved productivity. We compare the impact of attractiveness on grades in college courses where instructors directly observe the student’s appearance and courses where they do not. We find that in traditional classrooms, appearance matters: both below- and above-average-appearance female students earn lower grades. In regressions including student fixed effects, we find that students of above-average appearance earn significantly lower grades in online courses than those in traditional courses, a finding driven mainly by courses taught by male instructors. Our empirical evidence provides little support for the hypothesis that appearance is a proxy for productive traits but instead suggests that the return to appearance is due to discrimination.

Physical appearance and peer effects in academic performance

ABSTRACT A large literature examines the role of peer effects in shaping student academic outcomes. This article adds to that literature by introducing a new kind of peer effect – the effect of classmate physical appearance. We document that college students are assigned higher grades when in a classroom with peers who are rated as very attractive. This effect is strongest for female students and appears to be concentrated among the courses of younger and male instructors.

Class Size, Learning, and Knowledge Decay

Students may suffer from learning loss between the spring and fall semesters, an experience often called ‘summer learning loss’ or ‘knowledge decay.’ Although many studies examine knowledge decay in K-12, only a few examine college students. This study expands the literature by examining whether varying class sizes aggravate or dampen the loss of knowledge. We utilize a dataset on college students to analyze how class size affects knowledge decay using paired prerequisite and follow-on courses. We find that when a student takes larger prerequisite classes waiting longer to take the follow-on course raises grades. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that students learn less in larger class sections, leaving them with less knowledge to decay. The analysis also provides novel estimates of the relationship between class size and learning: holding the number of terms between courses constant, students enrolled in larger prerequisite classes earn similar grades in subsequent courses.