Research
Working Papers
- Frac Sand Mines and Increased Mortality: Evidence from a County-Level Analysis (with Caleb Mathison)
- Making FAFSA Mandatory: An Evaluation of Louisiana’s Financial Aid Submission Policy on College Enrollment and Pell Grant Awards
- Reading Resources and Student Achievement: Evidence from the Michigan Culture of Reading Program
- Did the USDA Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program Improve Student Performance? Evidence from Illinois Elementary Schools
With the increase in fracking for oil and natural gas, the demand for inputs in this industry has risen. Thus, there has been an emergence of frac sand mining, the process of mining sand that is used to prop open fractures in the ground to extract the oil and natural gas in hydraulic fracking. This paper examines the relationship between health and frac sand mining sites. We combine two decades of county-level data on industrial sand mining and mortality rates to quantify the association between sand mining and health risks across demographic groups using two-way fixed effects models. We find significant, positive associations between frac sand mining activity and mortality rates. Specifically, we find that counties with active sand mines have higher mortality rates due to diseases of the circulatory system. These results suggest that increased particulate matter due to sand mining activity may be a mechanism through which sand mining affects public health.
Link to paper Aiming to reduce inequalities between low- and high-income students enrolling in college, many states have proposed legislation requiring high school students to file a FAFSA application, or opt-out, prior to graduation. Louisiana was the first to implement this policy in the 2017-2018 academic year, thus potentially impacting enrollments in Fall 2018. FAFSA submissions increased significantly in Louisiana following the policy change, suggesting there may have been some follow through into post-secondary institutions. I use a synthetic control approach to estimate causal impacts of Louisiana’s FAFSA policy on college enrollment and Pell Grant awards. I find suggestive evidence that students may have substituted away from public two-year institutions towards four- year institutions. Specifically, I find marginally significant effects on enrollment for Black students at large, public four-year universities.
This paper considers the effect of additional reading resources on third-grade student achievement by exploiting a quasi-experimental setting. In 2014, the Michigan Department of Education Culture of Reading campaign gave over 3,000 copies of a storybook, along with reading instructions, to children in 115 elementary schools and early childhood programs. I use student-level data to identify the effect of additional reading resources on third-grade English language arts (ELA) test scores.
This paper examines the impact of the USDA Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program on academic achievement, attendance, and disiciplinary actions. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy with variation in treatment timing, I find suggestive evidence that FFVP participation reduces school-level average test scores, but the magnitude of the effect cannot be distinguished from a null effect. Further, I find no evidence of changes in attendance rates or suspensions that can be attributed to participation in the program.
Publications
- [Forthcoming] “What can we learn from student-performance measures? Identifying treatment in the presence of curves and letter grades,” Journal of Human Capital (with Glen Waddell)
- Geyer, A., Putz, J. and Misra, K. (2017),"The effect of short-term study abroad experience on American students’ leadership skills and career aspirations" , International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 31 No. 7, pp. 1042-1053