Abstract: Do households borrow against expected future government transfers? Identifying the role of expectations is difficult because policy changes typically alter both beliefs and contemporaneous resources. We examine a rare setting in which a large policy announcement shifted expected household wealth, but no transfer was ultimately delivered: the Biden Administration’s 2022 student loan forgiveness plan. The program promised up to $10,000 in federal debt relief for most eligible borrowers and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients (affecting up to 43 million borrowers), but was struck down by the Supreme Court before any forgiveness was distributed. Linking individual-level credit records to voter registration and turnout histories, we use a difference-in-differences design to show that eligible borrowers increased credit card balances by approximately $285 after the announcement, with consistent increases across other forms of debt. Borrowing responses vary systematically with political affiliation, consistent with partisan heterogeneity in expectations. Effects on financial distress are modest, but the results show that policy announcements can move household balance sheets well before implementation. Government promises can have real economic and political consequences even when they are ultimately unfulfilled.

Abstract: Many higher education institutions have increasingly viewed summer enrollment as an important way to promote timely graduation. However, financial barriers often limit student participation. Many institutions have implemented different policies to reduce the cost of summer sessions, but there is limited causal evidence regarding the effectiveness of such policies on summer enrollment, academic performance, and degree attainment. This paper examines a tuition incentive policy at a large public research university that allowed students to pay for only their first eight summer units. Using administrative data and a differencein-differences design comparing outcomes with a similar campus within the same university system and region, we identify significant effects on both the intensive and extensive margins: the policy increased the likelihood of summer enrollment and raised the number of credits attempted, with no significant impact on course grades. Analyses on long-run outcomes show modest but meaningful improvements in cumulative credits and on-time graduation. These results provide new evidence that summer tuition incentives can be an effective policy lever for increasing student credit attainment.

Abstract: With growing demand for skilled workers in high-growth sectors, states are increasingly adopting policies to expand workforce training in targeted fields. Yet, little is known about the impact of these policies on the supply of skilled workers. This paper examines Virginia’s Workforce Credential Grant (WCG), a novel statewide initiative enacted in 2016 that reimburses community colleges when students complete noncredit occupational programs and earn industry credentials in state-designated WCG-targeted fields. Using administrative data covering noncredit workforce training from 2011 to 2023, we exploit staggered adoption of eligible programs across colleges and occupational fields. Estimates from a staggered difference-in-differences framework suggest that the WCG increased student enrollments in targeted fields by around 90 percent, which is equivalent to approximately 140 additional enrollments for a given field at a college. At the same time, both course offerings and student enrollment in noncredit CTE fields that are not WCG-eligible declined, suggesting that both institutional effort and student demand shifted toward WCG-targeted fields within the noncredit workforce training domain. Using regional labor-market data from the American Community Survey, we further match Virginia PUMAs to similar areas in neighboring states. Results indicate that sub-baccalaureate employment in occupations corresponding to WCG-targeted fields rose modestly in the wake of WCG implementation. These findings indicate that outcome-contingent incentives operated at the program level can realign institutional behavior toward state workforce priorities effectively, and therefore highlight the potential of targeted funding policies to strengthen the connection between postsecondary training and labor-market needs.ion text goes here

Abstract: Female lawyers in the U.S. earn roughly 89 cents for every dollar earned by their male peers two years into practice; by year seven the ratio falls to 79 cents. Using the After the JD panel, which follows lawyers admitted to the bar in 2000 across the first 12 years of their legal careers, I show that the gender gap in earnings growth is confined to the first seven years of practice. Conditional on individual, firm, education, and region characteristics, women's earnings grow 4.5 log points less than men's from 2002 to 2007 and no differently from 2007 to 2012. The early divergence is driven by earnings changes at job switches rather than by within-job progression. Exploiting lawyers' stated reasons for changing jobs, I construct preference measures and find that the gap is concentrated among two overlapping groups: women with a child under three and women who prioritize manageable hours. Job switches motivated by advancement yield similar returns for men and women, suggesting that the divergence reflects differences in which jobs women move to rather than differential rewards for mobility.