When children work, their education competes for their time and effort. This paper develops and estimates a structural model in which Mexican students finishing primary school choose whether to enroll in secondary school, whether to work while in school, and how much study effort to exert. Choices depend on local school options, travel distance, and local labor market wages. The model is estimated using test scores, survey data from students, parents, and principals, school locations, and census-derived wage data. These estimates are then used to investigate the key barriers to students' academic success and evaluate a range of educational policies. Model simulations show that even modest enforcement of child labor restrictions raises enrollment by more than eliminating travel distance entirely, showing the importance of opportunity costs. Results also show significant heterogeneity in student effort choices, with effort being more productive in high-quality schools. This heterogeneity implies that policies equalizing school access cannot fully equalize students' educational outcomes without also addressing differences in school quality. The paper also evaluates alternative conditional cash transfer program designs, some of which condition transfers on academic performance.

Millions of children in low- and middle-income countries repeat a grade each year, yet little is known about how grade repetition shapes household behavior and student outcomes. In many such settings, promotion decisions are discretionary and made informally by teachers rather than governed by standardized rules. We study grade repetition in Pakistan using panel data that link students to their households, teachers, and schools. Unlike designed interventions, we interpret retention as an organic signal that conveys new information about a child’s academic ability to parents and students. Our empirical strategy compares students within the same school who have similar prior achievement and teacher ratings but different retention outcomes. We find that retention lowers test scores by 0.28 to 0.44 standard deviations and increases dropout by 7 percentage points. Parents respond by revising downward their beliefs about their child’s ability and reducing educational investments, while retained students become less confident in the returns to academic effort. In contrast, we find little evidence that teachers treat repeaters differently after the retention decision. These results suggest that grade repetition operates as a powerful information signal that shapes household decisions and contributes to persistent educational disadvantage.

In many countries, conditional cash transfers offered by the government have been shown to increase school enrollment for the beneficiaries. However, these policies’ potential to increase overall human capital depends on the schools’ capacity to expand enrollment with sufficiently high-quality instruction, ensuring that larger classes do not negatively affect peers. We develop a structural model in which students first face an enrolment decision, and then an effort decision which will impact their achievement and the effort of their teacher. Class composition and effort choices are determined endogenously via a strategic game, which takes into consideration peer effects within the classroom. To estimate the model, we combine administrative data on test performance and cash transfers, socioeconomic surveys, and spatial data on child wages. Our model allows for heterogeneous endowments and teacher ability, and with it we can evaluate the impact of a conditional cash transfer on not only beneficiary enrollment choices and achievement, but also on their classmates.

This project studies how engaging parents can complement classroom-based targeted instruction to support student learning. We use a randomized intervention in public primary schools in Pakistan that provides parents with information about their child’s learning progress and, for a subset of parents, guidance on how to support learning at home. The project examines how parents respond to information about their child’s learning and how these responses shape educational investments and student outcomes.