This study examines the impact of instruction modality on student learning outcomes, with a focus on disparities observed pre- and post-pandemic. Using administrative data from a public university spanning seven pre-pandemic and five post-pandemic semesters, the analysis controls for endogenous sorting using fixed effects. The findings suggest that face-to-face (FtF) instruction results in better student performance, such as higher grades and a lower withdrawal rate. Additionally, students with greater exposure to FtF instruction are less likely to repeat courses, more likely to graduate on time, and achieve higher Grade Point Averages (GPA). The study also shows that the FtF advantage has been decreasing over time, and the differences are smaller post-pandemic. The results are consistent across student and instructor characteristics, except for Honors and graduate students, where the FtF advantage is either smaller or statistically insignificant.
This paper investigates the role of education in the job search process of the young unemployed workers. Exploiting the variation in education induced by a reform that caused a dramatic increase in the exposed cohorts’ educational attainment, and using data obtained from administrative unemployment insurance (UI) records, we identify the reduced form impact of education on unemployment duration. We show that high-educated individuals, compared to their low-educated counterparts, stay unemployed longer, and they are less likely to transition into employment before their UI benefit periods expire, suggesting education may be increasing one’s selectiveness over jobs. This difference in unemployment duration between the high- vs. the low-educated diminishes when the jobs are scarce, i.e., during the recessionary periods and in the regions of the country where the unemployment rate is high. In a supplementary analysis, we show that an extension of UI benefit period causes a differential impact on workers’ unemployment duration based on their educational attainment. Particularly, a longer benefit period increases the unemployment durations of the high-educated workers more than the low educated. In addition, a prolonged benefit period increases low-educated unemployed workers’ probability of finding a job, but it has a null effect on the high-educated. Our findings highlight the importance of taking worker characteristics into consideration when designing the UI system.
An important question in representative democracies is how to ensure that politicians behave in the best interests of citizens rather than in their own private interests. One institutional device available to regulate the actions of politicians is their pay structure. This paper provides fresh insights into the impact of income on the performance of politicians using a unique law change implemented in Turkey in 2012. Members of parliament ( MP s) in Turkey, who are retired from their pre‐political career jobs, earn a retirement pension on top of their MP salaries. A 2012 law significantly increased MP s’ pension earnings by pegging it to 18% of the President's salary, while keeping the earnings of non‐retired MP s unchanged. Using a difference‐in‐differences strategy, we find that the increase in earnings due to the 2012 law reduced the overall performance of retired MP s, as measured by legislative activities, by 12.3% of a standard deviation. We find that the law change also reduced MP s’ attendance at parliamentary sessions. Given the design features of the Turkish reform, we believe that it is the increase in demand for leisure, not selection and re‐election incentives, that serves as the main explanation for our finding.
An important question in representative democracies is how to ensure that politicians behave in the best interest of citizens rather than their own private interests. Aside from elections, one of the few institutional devices available to regulate the actions of politicians is their pay structure. In this paper, we provide fresh insights into the impact of politician salaries on their performance using a unique law change implemented in 2012 in Turkey. Specifically, the members of the parliament (MPs) in Turkey who are retired from their pre-political career jobs earn a pension bonus on top of their MP salaries. The law change in 2012 significantly increased the pension bonus by pegging it to 18 percent of the salary of the President of Turkey, while keeping the salaries of non-retired MPs unchanged. By exploiting the variation in total salaries caused by the new law in a difference-in-differences framework, we find that the salary increase had a negative impact on the performance of the retired MPs. In particular, the overall performance of these MPs was lowered by 12.3 percent of a standard deviation as a result of the increase in salary caused by the new law. This finding is robust to numerous specification tests. Furthermore, the results obtained from an auxiliary analysis suggest that one of the mechanisms through which MPs reduce their performance is through absenteeism.
The pandemic has revived the longstanding debate about the effect of online versus face-to-face instruction on student achievement. The goal of this paper is to provide new evidence on the impact of online versus face-to-face instruction on student learning outcomes, using rich, transcript-level longitudinal data from a public university. We pay particular attention to eliminating selection bias by incorporating student and instructor fixed effects into the empirical analysis as well as to separate out the impact of online versus in-person education from COVID-19-related confounding factors. Our results indicate that students in face-to-face courses perform better than their online counterparts with respect to their grades, the propensity to withdraw from the course, and the likelihood of receiving a passing grade. However, our investigation also reveals that instructor-specific factors, such as leniency in grading or actions towards preventing violations of academic integrity, play a significant role in determining the studied relationship. Without accounting for these instructor-specific factors, the relationship is severely biased, causing one to mistakenly conclude that online instruction is better for student learning than face-to-face instruction. Our analysis further documents a rise in grades associated with COVID-19-triggered changes to student assessment policies embraced by universities as well as instructors adopting a more flexible approach to grading. While these developments led to an increase in grades for all students overall, those who began Spring 2020 in face-to-face courses appear to have benefitted more generously from them. Finally, an auxiliary analysis shows that living in neighborhoods with better broadband technology is associated with a larger increase in grades among students who had to switch from in-person to online instruction during COVID-19. This finding supports the argument that unequal access to technology might have caused learning disparities to get deepened during the pandemic.
This paper examines the effect of instruction modality on student learning outcomes, with a particular emphasis on the disparities observed before and after the pandemic.The analysis uses administrative data from a public university that spans seven pre-pandemic and five postpandemic semesters in a research design that controls for endogenous sorting into instruction modality at the student, instructor, and course levels using fixed effects.The findings show that face-to-face (FtF) instruction leads to better student performance in the courses, i.e., higher grades, a greater likelihood of receiving a passing grade and achieving a grade of A, and a lower tendency to withdraw from the course.Consistent with this finding, students who have had greater exposure to FtF instruction have a lower likelihood of course repetition, a higher probability of graduating on time, and achieving a higher graduation GPA.The findings further reveal that these differences have been decreasing over time, and the post-pandemic differences are much smaller.The results are largely consistent across students and instructors with different characteristics and subject areas, except for students in the Honors program and graduate students, where the FtF advantage is either smaller or statistically insignificant.
Abstract Exploiting the variation in education induced by a reform that compelled individuals to obtain additional schooling in Turkey, and using administrative unemployment insurance (UI) records, we show that high‐educated unemployed workers, compared to their low‐educated counterparts, use unemployment benefits longer, and they are less likely to find employment before their benefit periods expire. This suggests education increases one's selectiveness over jobs. We also show benefit generosity impacts the high‐ versus low‐educated differentially. Extended benefits increase low‐educated workers' probability of finding employment more than the high‐educated. Our findings highlight the importance of considering worker attributes when designing the UI system.
Abstract This paper examines the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit generosity on labor market transitions in Turkey from 2002 to 2012. Using a unique administrative dataset, I take advantage of a sharp discontinuity in treatment assignment at 900‐paid‐premium‐days to identify the impact of generosity on the outcome variables. I find that unemployment benefit duration is increased by approximately 0.07 weeks per additional week of UI. However, more generous benefits lead to lower probabilities of transition to employment and the impact is greater compared to developed countries. In addition, workers who are entitled to longer UI periods have lower probabilities of cheating the system and rejecting the services of the Turkish Employment Agency.
Past research shows that students’ educational outcomes improve when their race is the same as their teachers’ race. One explanation for this finding is the Role Model effect: instructors increase same-race students’ motivation by updating their beliefs on returns to education and providing an example of a career/educational path that the same-race students can imitate. This paper empirically evaluates the importance of the Role Model effect under the premise that this channel is more applicable to students significantly younger than their professors. Using administrative data from a Carnegie R1 classified university where an ample share of students are older than the traditional college age and focusing on a subsample of required classes that eliminate the possibility of strategic instructor choice, we show that students whose races are the same as their professors earn higher grades in their courses, but only if they are considerably younger than their professors. Specifically, young race-matched students’ course grades increase by about 0.1-0.2 on a 4.0 scale. Benefits from student-teacher race matches do not accrue to older students. We provide evidence suggesting our results are not driven by students’ strategic course-taking behavior, such as signing up for easy classes or preferred instructors, delaying courses, or major switching in a calculated fashion. The race-match effects start early in the semester and persist in the long run until graduation. We do not find any race-match effect for either young or old STEM students who are high achieving and already highly motivated. The highest quality, high-value-added instructors improve all students’ grades regardless of race and age.
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