Eric Chyn

Girls are more likely to go to college than boys. One explanation for this pattern is that boys have weaker noncognitive skills, such as self-discipline, than girls. In Can Gifted Education Help Higher-Ability Boys from Disadvantaged Backgrounds? (NBER Working Paper 33282), David Card, Eric Chyn,...

This paper studies the effects of the largest residential racial desegregation initiative in U.S. history, the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program. From the late 1970s to the 1990s, Gautreaux moved thousands of Black families into predominantly white neighborhoods to support racial and economic...

Boys are less likely than girls to enter college, a gap that is often attributed to a lack of non-cognitive skills such as motivation and self-discipline. We study how being classified as gifted determined by having an IQ score of 116 or higher affects college entry rates of disadvantaged children...

This article provides empirical researchers with an introduction and guide to research designs based on variation in judge and examiner tendencies to administer treatments or other interventions. We review the basic theory behind the research design, outline the assumptions under which the design...

How do majority groups respond to a narrowing of inequality in racially polarized environments? We study this question by examining the effects of the Freedmens Bureau, an agency created after the U.S. Civil War to provide aid to former slaves and launch institutional reform in the South. We use new...

Segregation based on race and income is a defining feature of cities and schools across the United States. While Black Americans make up less than 14 percent of the overall population, the typical Black child lives in a neighborhood where Black families make up the majority of residents and attends...

We study the distributional effects of remote learning using a novel approach that combines preference data from a conjoint survey experiment with administrative records of student outcomes. The experimentally derived preference data allow us to account for selection into remote learning while also...

This paper studies the impact of the First Great Migration on children. We use the complete count 1940 Census to estimate selection-corrected place effects on education for children of Black migrants. On average, Black children gained 0.8 years of schooling (12 percent) by moving from the South to...

This paper studies one of the largest spatially targeted redevelopment efforts implemented in the United States: public housing demolitions sponsored by the HOPE VI program. Focusing on Chicago, we study welfare and racial disparities in the impacts of demolitions using a structural model that...

This paper provides new evidence on the causal impacts of city-wide racial segregation on intergenerational mobility. We use an instrumental variable approach that relies on plausibly exogenous variation in segregation due to the arrangement of railroad tracks in the nineteenth century. Our analysis...

This paper uses birth records from California and mothers who move to quantify the absolute and relative importance of birth location in early-life health. Using a model that includes mother and location fixed effects, we find that moving from a below- to an above-median birth weight location leads...

To study the effects of neighborhood and place-based interventions, this paper incorporates neighborhood effects into a general equilibrium (GE) heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations model with endogenous location choice and child skill development. Importantly, housing costs as well as...

How does one's place of residence affect individual behavior and long-run outcomes? Understanding neighborhood and place effects has been a leading question for social scientists during the past half-century. Recent empirical studies using experimental and quasi-experimental research designs have...

We study a simple savings scheme that allows workers to defer receipt of part of their wages for three months at zero interest. The scheme significantly increases savings during the deferral period, leading to higher post-disbursement spending on lumpy goods. Two years later, after two additional...

How do early-life experiences shape political identity? In this paper, we study how a shock to the social lives of youth affected their party affiliation in adulthood. Specifically, we examine the end of race-based busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools (CMS), an event that led to large changes in...

Nearly half of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck, with little savings to respond to an unexpected shock like a car repair or hospital bill. Many low-income and elderly households are reliant on government programs to make ends meet. For these households, a mismatch in the timing of when...

How does one's childhood neighborhood shape political engagement later in life? We leverage a natural experiment that moved children out of disadvantaged neighborhoods to study effects on their voting behavior more than a decade later. Using linked administrative data, we find that children who were...

We use comprehensive administrative data from Rhode Island to measure the impact of early-life interventions for low birth weight newborns on later-life outcomes. We use a regression discontinuity design based on the 1,500-gram threshold for Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW) status. We show that...

This paper measures impacts of removing children from families investigated for abuse or neglect. We use removal tendencies of child protection investigators as an instrument. We focus on young children investigated before age 6 and find that removal significantly increases test scores and reduces...

This paper provides new evidence on the effects of paid maternity leave on both mothers and their children by exploiting income thresholds that affect program eligibility for Temporary Disability Insurance in the state of Rhode Island. We use comprehensive administrative data and a regression...

This paper explores whether private markets can incentivize environmental stewardship. We examine the consumer response to the 2010 BP oil spill and test how BP's investment in the 2000-2008 Beyond Petroleum green advertising campaign affected this response. We find evidence consistent with consumer...