UC Riverside

This dissertation presents three independent research projects. The first chapter of this thesis studies the impact of a large-scale adult learning program on child health. The study exploits the exogenous variation created by the program implementation in a regression discontinuity framework using a nationally representative household survey. The study finds that children whose mothers are eligible for the program are less undernourished, with improved health outcomes measured by height-for-age and weight-for-age z-scores. The results are likely driven by increased diversity in children’s diets and higher labor force participation of mothers. There is no evidence for changes in fertility behavior and utilization of healthcare services. The results translate to a large social gain induced by favorable child health outcomes, suggesting additional scope for well-designed adult learning programs in developing countries to raise overall welfare.

The second chapter investigates the impact of a teacher’s effectiveness on her students’ future peers. Good teachers affect both the short- and long-term achievements of their students. However, teachers might also be able to influence short- and long-term outcomes of future peers of their students. Using administrative data from a Southern state, this study quantifies teacher effects on such spillovers. The identification comes from the natural transitions of students from multiple elementary schools into a single middle school. The study finds that the positive impact of teachers on their students spills over to affect their students’ future peers with improved cognitive outcomes in middle school and long-run outcomes in high school. The findings indicate that such unaccounted spillovers underestimate the actual effectiveness of a teacher.

The third chapter measures the impact of two main signals of tertiary-level human capital accumulation, college quality, and certification, on the first stage of the hiring process in India. This experimental study involved sending fake resumes to job postings for recent engineering graduates across major cities. The study finds no impact on callbacks of having graduated from a mid-tier college ranked in the top 300 relative to one outside of the top 1000. There is also no impact of scoring in the highest as opposed to the lowest quartile of a widely-used certification test. The study does not find evidence of gender discrimination or heterogeneity by company characteristics.