research

Working Papers

1. The Impact of Neighborhood School Choice: Evidence from Los Angeles’ Zones of Choice

   Campos, Christopher, and Kearns, Caitlin

   Reject and Resubmit at QJE

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   This paper evaluates the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program in Los Angeles, a school choice initiative that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left traditional attendance zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We study the impacts of the ZOC program on student achievement and college enrollment using a matched difference-in-differences design that compares changes in outcomes for ZOC schools and demographically similar non-ZOC schools. Our findings reveal that the ZOC program boosted student outcomes markedly, closing achievement and college enrollment gaps between ZOC neighborhoods and the rest of the district. These gains are explained by general improvements in school effectiveness rather than changes in student match quality, and school-specific gains are concentrated among the lowest-performing schools. We interpret these findings through the lens of a model of school demand in which schools exert costly effort to improve quality. The model allows us to measure the increase in competition facing each ZOC school based on household preferences and the spatial distribution of schools. We demonstrate that the effects of ZOC were larger for schools exposed to more competition, supporting the notion that competition is a key channel driving the impacts of ZOC. Demand estimates derived from rank-ordered preference lists suggest families place substantial weight on schools’ academic quality, providing schools competitive incentives to improve their effectiveness. Our findings demonstrate the potential for public school choice to alter the quality of an important determinant of neighborhood quality, reduce neighborhood-based disparities in educational opportunity, and produce sustained improvements in student outcomes.

2. Independent Contracting, Self-Employment, and Gig Work: Evidence from California Tax Data

   Bernhardt, Annette, Campos, Christopher, Prohofsky, Allen, Ramesh, Aparna, and Rothstein, Jesse

   Forthcoming at ILR Review

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   We use de-identified data from California personal income tax returns to measure the frequency and nature of independent contracting work in California. We identify independent contractors by the presence of a Schedule C on the tax return and/or the receipt of a Form 1099 information return. We estimate that 14.4% of California workers aged 18-64 in tax year 2016 had some independent contracting income; over half of these do not have traditional jobs generating W-2s and get all of their earnings from independent contracting. Workers with low earnings are significantly more likely to earn independent contracting income and to rely primarily or exclusively on that income. We explore the characteristics of independent contractors and their distribution across family type, geography, and industry.

Work in Progress

1. Social Interactions and Preferences for Schools: Experimental Evidence from Los Angeles

   Campos, Christopher

   Draft coming soon

   Abs

   This paper studies the role of preferences, information, and social interactions in education markets. I study how parents’ choices respond to information, the type of information their choices are most responsive to, and importantly, how their responses depend on other parents’ information. This is motivated by the fact that the success of market-oriented reforms depends crucially on parents identifying and choosing effective schools, but a growing body of evidence suggests that may not always be the case. To understand the role of biases, I begin by eliciting parents’ beliefs about school quality and peer quality. To study relative preferences for school and peer quality, I cross-randomize two margins of information and compare how parents’ choices respond in various scenarios. Last, to study social interactions, I use a spillover design that allows me to detect treatment effects for untreated parents in treated schools. I fin¬d modest levels of bias for both school and peer quality. I find that receiving information on either quality margin changes parents’ decisions, corroborating the beliefs data that parents are imperfectly informed about each. I then show that social interactions are prevalent, generating treatment effects for untreated parents in treated schools that are identical to treated parents. Importantly, treatment effects are only documented among parents in schools where a sufficiently large number of other parents are treated with information, emphasizing the importance of social interactions in generating meaningful changes in demand. The social interactions are sufficiently large to generate market-level consensuses moving average demand toward higher value-added schools and without a meaningful reduction in peer quality. These findings suggest that when parents are perfectly informed about both school and peer quality, parental interactions are essential for interpreting the information and that demand moves in a way consistent with parents rewarding effective schools.

2. Decomposing the Gender Earnings Gap

   Bucarey, Alonso, Campos, Christopher, Contreras, Dante, and Munoz, Pablo

   Draft coming soon

   Abs

   This paper studies the interplay between preferences, gender return differentials, and centralized assignment in explaining the gender earnings gap among college graduates. Using rich data of rank-ordered lists from the Chilean centralized college admissions system coupled with a Roy-style framework, we decompose the within-major gender earnings gap into differences in the returns to different majors and differences in self-selection into majors. We find that most of the within-major earnings gap is due to differences in labor market returns for men and women majoring in the same fields, but we also find differences in self-selection patterns between men and women. Oaxaca-style decompositions show that most of the gap is due to differences in the representation of women in high-earning majors, with Engineering playing a significant role. We conclude with a counterfactual analysis that leverages the rules embedded in centralized assignment to assess the scope of differences policies. Our findings show that gender-specific quotas may serve as a feasible policy lever that increases the representation of women in high earnings field and substantially reduces the gender earnings gap among college graduates.

Other Publications

1. Understanding Which Prices Affect Inflation Expectations

   Campos, Christopher, McMain, Michael, and Pedemonte, Mathieu

   Economic Commentary (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland)

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   Inflation expectations have an impact on one’s economic behavior. We show that the inflation expectations of professional forecasters and consumers are predicted by very different prices. While professional forecasters weigh prices similar to the consumer price index, consumers seem to focus on prices they see more often, such as those for food and new vehicles. These are also prices that have seen disproportionally high volatility since the onset of the pandemic. We argue that heterogeneity in the importance of component-specific inflation can have relevant economic implications and disproportionate effects on consumers’ inflation expectations that can, in turn, affect economic behavior.