Katherine McElroy

Retention of effective teachers has significant implications for student outcomes. Thus, understanding factors that influence teacher retention is a central concern in education research. I use a performance pay scheme to study the relationship between salary and teacher decisions to exit or become an assistant principal along the performance distribution of teachers. Applying a regression discontinuity design, I find that teachers whose salary can increase across the cutoff are 4.2 percentage points less likely to exit the district public school system when they score just above the cutoff, even in the absence of dismissal threats. I find no statistically significant effect for teachers with no financial incentive around the cutoff. Exploring heterogeneity in teacher responses across the performance distribution yields suggestive evidence that high-performing teachers are less responsive to salary. While low-performing teachers, who are subject to additional performance requirements to advance in the salary schedule, are more likely to exit when they face no financial incentive and score just above the cutoff. I find suggestive evidence that performance burdens can be as effective as dismissal threats in incentivizing attrition, but only among low-performing teachers with competitive outside options.

This paper investigates how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility affects food expenditures. A 2019 policy change in California granted previously ineligible Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients SNAP eligibility. Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we find that after the policy change, affected SSI recipients increased their "food at home" budget share between 2.5 to 4.3 percentage points ($120 to $206 per quarter). The SNAP effect on total food expenditures is dampened by a decrease in "food away from home" which SNAP benefits cannot be spent on.

This paper estimates the long-run effects of school accountability on educational attainment by exploiting two sources of variation: staggered implementation of accountability across states and individuals' exposure to accountability. I find 12 years of exposure to school accountability leads to an increase in the likelihood of graduating high school by 2.3 percentage points but has no statistically significant effect on college attendance or the likelihood of receiving a Bachelor's degree. However, racial heterogeneity shows Hispanic students experience a significant increase in the likelihood of attending college. I rule out changes in school expenditures and teacher characteristics as potential mechanisms and present suggestive evidence that schools are classifying more students as learning disabled. Lastly, accountability is more effective in conjunction with promotion gates.

Funds that compensate financial professionals based on whether their clients invest in those funds can create conflicts of interest between the financial professionals and their clients. Using Morningstar data from 2018-2021, we take advantage of a novel mutual fund fee categorization method that groups mutual fund fees by the way they compensate financial professionals. We find mutual funds that have potential conflicts of interest by paying financial professionals sales-based commissions or 12b-1 fees are associated with lower gross returns compared to funds that do not have these conflicts. The association is concentrated in active domestic equity funds and is larger for net returns. These findings suggest financial incentives, rather than expected performance, may be driving investment into funds. This paper contributes to the recent federal policy debate around safeguarding investors against financial professionals’ potential conflicts of interests.