Job Market Paper

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Does It Matter How Old Your Peers Are? Evidence on Heterogeneous Effects of Male and Female Peer Age in Elementary School (Link to Paper)

Abstract: Existing literature demonstrates that peer age plays a crucial role in shaping student outcomes in elementary school. I build on this literature by highlighting that differences in developmental rates between boys and girls likely lead to varying theoretical effects of peer age based on gender. Using administrative data on public school students in North Carolina, I exploit cross-cohort, within-school variation in third-grade peer age to examine these effects. I find that both male and female peer age positively influence student test scores, but male peer age has an impact that is twice as large as female peer age. Further analysis reveals substantial differences in these effects based on students’ gender, age, and economic disadvantage. These findings underscore the importance of separately considering male and female peer age when assigning students to classrooms, providing practical strategies to enhance learning outcomes in elementary schools.

Work in Progress 

Do Certain Teachers Lead to More Students Being Diagnosed as Disabled? (with Ben Ost)

To the Parent/Guardian: Do Letters from the School Work? 

Student Age and Teacher Characteristics: Is There a Systematic Sorting?

Pre-PhD Publications

Inflation – Economic Growth Relationship: Evidence from Bangladesh. 

The Jahangirnagar Economic Review, Vol 21, June 2011

Money, Income and Causality: The Bangladesh Experience (with Nisar Shams, and Mahmud Hassan)

Asian Economic Review, Journal of the Indian Institute of Economics 52.2, pp. 231-236, August 2010.