Research

Published Research

Driving technology innovation through social entrepreneurship at Prezi

Authors: Bala Mulloth, Jill R. Kickul, Lisa K. Gundry

Purpose

There has been a profound neglect in most of the literature dealing with social entrepreneurship on the relationship between social entrepreneurship and technological innovation. The purpose of this paper is to provide new insights into that relationship by using the case of Prezi, a Budapest, Hungary-based mission-driven software company.

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Published Research

How Effective are Federally Mandated Information Disclosures?

Authors: Arthur G. Fraas

Government mandates to disclose information are a standard response to problems of asymmetric information. We examine recent major U.S. regulations issued between 2008 and 2013 to identify disclosure mandates and look for quantitative assessments of their effectiveness in improving comprehension.

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Published Research

Air Pollution and Procyclical Mortality

Authors: Christopher J. Ruhm, Garth Heutel

Prior research demonstrates that mortality rates increase during economic booms and decrease during economic busts, but little is known about the role of environmental risks as a potential mechanism for this relationship. We investigate the contribution of air pollution to the procyclicality of deaths by combining county-level data on overall, cause-specific, and age-specific mortality rates with county-level measures of ambient concentrations of three types of pollutants and the unemployment rate.

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Published Research

What Lies Beneath? Minority Group Members’ Suspicion of Whites’ Egalitarian Motivation Predicts Responses to Whites’ Smiles

Authors: Sophie Trawalter, Jonathan W. Kunstman, Taylor Tuscherer, E. Paige Lloyd

Antiprejudice norms and attempts to conceal racial bias have made Whites’ positive treatment of racial minorities attributionally ambiguous. Although some minorities believe Whites’ positivity is genuine, others are suspicious of Whites’ motives and believe their kindness is primarily motivated by desires to avoid appearing prejudiced. 

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Published Research

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? Investigating Rates and Patterns of Financial Aid Renewal Among College Freshmen

Authors: Benjamin Castleman, Kelli Bird

College affordability continues to be a top concern among prospective students, their families, and policy makers. Prior work has demonstrated that a significant share of prospective students forgo financial aid because they did not complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA); recent federal policy efforts have focused on supporting students and their families to successfully file the FAFSA. 

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Published Research

Within-and Between-Sector Quality Differences in Early Childhood Education and Care

Authors: Daphna Bassok, Maria Fitzpatrick, Erica Greenberg, Susanna Loeb

This study leverages nationally representative data (N ≈ 6,000) to examine the magnitude of quality differences between (a) formal and informal early childhood education and care providers; (b) Head Start, prekindergarten, and other center-based care; and (c) programs serving toddlers and those serving preschoolers. It then documents differences in children’s reading and math skills at age 5 between those who had enrolled in formal and informal settings. 

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Published Research

Assessing School Turnaround: Evidence from Ohio

Authors: Daniel W. Player, Veronica Katz

Policy makers have struggled to find successful approaches to address concentrated, persistent low school achievement. While NCLB and the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program have devoted significant time and attention to turnaround, very little empirical evidence substantiates whether and how these efforts work.

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Published Research

The Effects of Universal State Pre-Kindergarten on the Child Care Sector: The Case of Florida’s Voluntary Prekindergarten Program

Authors: Daphna Bassok, Luke Miller, Eva Galdo

Over the past two decades states have drastically increased their investments in pre-kindergarten programs. One major question about state investments in early childhood education programs is to what extent these initiatives create new child care options rather than crowd-out existing private child care options.

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Published Research

Intensive College Counseling and the Enrollment and Persistence of Low Income Students

Authors: Benjamin Castleman, Joshua Goodman

Though counseling is one commonly pursued intervention to improve college enrollment and completion for disadvantaged students, there is relatively little causal evidence on its efficacy. We use a regression discontinuity design to study the impact of intensive college counseling provided to college-seeking, low income students by a Massachusetts program that admits applicants partly on the basis of a minimum GPA requirement.

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