Christopher Walters joined the Berkeley faculty as an assistant professor in 2013 after completing a PhD in economics at MIT. Read more >, We are now accepting submissions for our Fall 2022 volume. UCB Leveraging Lotteries for School Value-added: Testing and Estimation, Evaluating High Schools on College Preparation, Christopher Walters - Google Scholar CW: I think my choice to focus on labor instead of other subfields of economics is a combination of the set of questions you get to answer in labor and the sort of research philosophy of the field, which are linked to each other. The 2022 Methods Lectures, presented by Jiayang Gu of the University of Toronto and Christopher Walters of the University of California, Berkeley, provide an introduction to the theory and application of these methods. Le systme ne peut pas raliser cette opration maintenant. and Deliver: Effects of Boston's Charter Walters is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Affiliate at the MIT School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative (SEII) and an affiliate of J-PAL North America. Human Capital: Evidence from Head Start, Explaining Articles Cited by Public access Co-authors. I have a few different projects but most of them have that feature, in one way or another. And so we like that as social scientists; thats a well-controlled comparison and were confident interpreting the difference between lottery winners and losers as the causal effect of getting into this school and attending this school. Christopher Walters joined the Berkeley faculty as an assistant professor in 2013 after completing a PhD in economics at MIT. Verified email at berkeley.edu. NBER SI Methods Lecture: Empirical Bayes Methods -- Theory and Application (with Jiaying Gu, 2022; AEA Continuing Education Program: Labor Economics and Applied Econometrics (, AEA Continuing Education Program: Cross-Section Econometrics (, UC Berkeley Economics 244: Applied Econometrics, Ph.D. level (Fall 2015, 2017-2019, 2021, Spring 2021, 2023), UC Berkeley Economics 250A: Labor Economics I, Ph.D. level (Spring 2018, Fall 2018-2019, 2021, Spring 2021, 2023), UC Berkeley Economics 152: Wage Theory and Public Policy, undergraduate level (Spring 2015-2016, 2018-2020), University of Chicago Economics 34620: Topics in Human Capital (Spring 2017), UC Berkeley Economics 250B: Labor Economics II, Ph.D. level (Spring 2014-2016). By that I mean a setting where you have something that looks like a well-controlled or randomized comparison where some group of people get access to some program or opportunity and another set of people randomly dont. Christopher Walters joined the Berkeley faculty as an assistant professor in 2013 after completing a PhD in economics at MIT. Christopher Walters, Berkeley - Department of Economics - UiO Science, Augmenting State Capacity for Child Development: Experimental Evidence from India, Race and the Mismeasure of School Quality, Methods for Measuring School Effectiveness, Simple and Credible Value-Added Estimation Using Centralized School Assignment, Policy Evaluation with Multiple Instrumental Variables, The Long-Term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston, Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. PDF University of California, Berkeley Department of Economics Associate Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley - Cited by 4,153 . labor economics, applied econometrics, economics of education, structural modeling. Free to choose: Can school choice reduce student achievement? Could you begin by telling me about your background and how it helped shape your academic focus, and what experiences helped you find your passion for economics? x]7}V[:k7%Z,k[3caY` 0yjfUe-28Y|jFomoo8l[UwFm6^q|TK>~|c_/G@w7/hGC Xs/c8~mM$pKB'4 o` SH@d6E8HpqU$#+s7KyEPfM5sRtl|'k8/b@)ZR ~g5j5u6[Y_`"r, -mL{jJ$Noi9Xfk5>S9f3SUSW&|2~fXA|q,?xn}:?Q]Fl[ozoXcC$XY2 "ZR]m"Do{ zB&A02L D8;f#_ {h/g8CP$WIQ^CWjH " X__>0uwj wNOvc-oGJ?J?yk}!` j>ofvx2v]=>mhQ,Kn=zFJ)G# h*c?$_[F]M`KY J(s'5@p!&QQ& U=m1V{|Q<7 G'@!\ I always kind of knew I liked school, so I knew I was probably going to go to grad school or something, but I didnt know exactly what. Could you begin by telling me about your background and how it helped shape your academic focus, and what experiences helped you find your passion for economics? : I think my choice to focus on labor instead of other subfields of economics is a combination of the set of questions you get to answer in labor and the sort of research philosophy of the field, which are linked to each other. Check out the article or read the full paper here. PD: What are some areas you are looking into now and how are you looking to collect your data? Im not sure all economists would agree with me, but I think our best evidence suggests theres actually pretty large returns to human capital investment at all different stages of the educational career, including the college attendance decision. CW: Im not sure I totally agree on the premise of that question. Department website Christopher Walters Associate Professor of Economics Christopher Walters joined the economics department as an assistant professor after receiving his PhD in economics from MIT in 2013. Its very practical and concrete, and not very abstract. Faculty profiles | Department of Economics -0dq_C b'1@bh1xoFUm|>?6vo-qh;MSWwO!mvy #[_ iC:GtVBrNvB,(^H6k$F2h| oD)^#*?p-#|F1Aa]*~qqOfBE^F+} 0M%AQoc2o |B:uY;TraF"A4eJ@5FJp,Con/fR0$@H"2yHSe_jZ,mo5W_ a8jhRm$Bs$4#"J#Pq8>xgg@Ve}Bh*)10$^O {N_;a8W2@VxkD+aU1C^p_?TAn|B3D`( wQ]]lA%mnON'a)Q{9B2D`6o^. Stand and deliver: Effects of Bostons charter high schools on college preparation, entry, and choice, Inputs and impacts in charter schools: KIPP Lynn, Leveraging lotteries for school value-added: Testing and estimation, Inputs in the production of early childhood human capital: Evidence from Head Start, The impact of price caps and spending cuts on US postsecondary attainment, Systemic discrimination among large US employers, The long-term effects of universal preschool in Boston, The causal interpretation of two-stage least squares with multiple instrumental variables, Student achievement in Massachusetts charter schools, Can successful schools replicate? UC Berkeley Economics 244: Applied Econometrics, Ph.D. level (Fall 2015, 2017-2019, 2021, Spring 2021, 2023) I have a couple projects on the Head Start program, which is a public preschool program for underprivileged kids in the United States. The expected price of renting . In my graduate classes, readings, and recent work in top journals in this area, I got interested in the combination of choices and experiments that were on the frontier of the education literature. What made you decide on labor economics as your focus? California, Berkeley, College of Letters and Research brief summarizing work by O-Lab affiliate Christopher Walters (UC Berkeley), Guthrie Gray-Lobe (University of Chicago), and Parag Pathak (MIT). CW: Im not sure. So I would say the modern applied micro paradigm, especially the way that I was taught in graduate school, is that you need a good experiment to be able to say anything interesting about a social science question. University of California, Berkeley | College of Letters & Science, School choice; school effectiveness; early childhood interventions, Economics of education; human capital; discrete choice modeling; program evaluation, 530 Evans Hall #3880, Berkeley, California 94720-3880. University of California, Berkeley 207 . Department of Economics University of California, Berkeley 530 Evans Hall #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 Tel: (510) 643-8596 CW: A lot of my work is secondary analysis of existing data sets: either experiments that other people have run, or administrative datasets that have something that looks like a quasi-experiment, like lotteries that I mentioned. CW: Thats a good question too. Distinguished Professor of Economics and Professor of Business Administration Teaching DeLong, J.Bradford Professor Teaching Echenique , Federico Professor Teaching So, do you think the outcome or decision-making mechanism would change for that person, and would differ from the work you did on charter schools for example? Phone: (540) 392-5641 Christopher Walters, University of California, Berkeley Professor Walters is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Faculty Research Fellow in the programs on education and labor studies at the National Bureau of Economic Research. BER Staff Writer Parmita Das sat down with Professor Walters on 11 April, 2019 for the following interview: Parmita Das: Id like to begin by speaking to you about how your personal journey led you to economics and then delve deeper into your research interests. in the Production of Early Childhood PD: We learned in Econ 2, a basic economics class, that the return on investment in human capital decreases as a person progresses through their education. : Sure! 530 Evans Hall #3880 So the combination of being attracted to the experimentalist, clean, and causal identification you get from lotteries with the opportunity to model peoples choices with the administrative data on who is and is not applying and what their backgrounds look like, is what led me to my work on that topic. This work includes quasi-experimental studies of the effects of charter schools on test scores and post-secondary outcomes, a study documenting and explaining variation in effectiveness across Head Start childcare centers, and an analysis of differences in the demand for school quality across demographic groups. Berkeley Opportunity LabFaculty & StaffChristopher Walters I went into college thinking I was going to do more humanities-related disciplines. In grad school I was sort of interested in labor markets and how people accumulate the kinds of skills that they sell on the labor market, but there is a lot of different sub-questions under that. I never had a real job and I felt like I was pretty good at school, and I decided I was gonna keep doing it. Im referencing some research by Seth Zimmerman, whos an economist at the University of Chicago School of Business. His research focuses on the topics in labor economics and the economics of education, including early childhood programs, school effectiveness, and labor market discrimination. PD: What inspired you to research into school choice and charter schools? Social Security: An Answer for Developing Nations, Play-by-Play of Warren-care: Financing the Behemoth, Bernie Sanders Moral Crusade to Implement Medicare for All, Unbonded: Liz Truss and the collapse of trust in the British Parliament, LIV Golf: Startup Leagues and the Future of Sports. Chris walters uc berkeley economics 244 applied - Course Hero x p 3 WlO^8a7 ">-4[Q ]>o1mOyi vtu3Lsf5f.Dy;[.Zqjz{nLf ZoS&$ Privacy| Accessibility | Nondiscrimination. Time and place: Mar. Homepage: http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~crwalters A part of that was opportunity. : Im not sure. Thank you for your time! That question is premised on the idea that the return on human capital investment is largest in the early years of schooling. Research brief summarizing work by Ellora Derenoncourt and Claire Montialoux. Christopher Walters Asim Khwaja Campos, Christopher B.A., B.S. Berkeley Opportunity Lab, University of California, Berkeley , Berkeley, CA, U.S.A. Voting Rights Equal Economic Progress: The What Caused Racial Disparities in Pollution Is the Safety Net a Long-Term Investment? Chris Walters, (925) 876-3294, Berkeley Public Records Instantly I was kind of attracted to that set of questions; answering questions about real sources of well-being or lack thereof in peoples lives. PD: So what made the choice of subfield in economics clear for you? I went into college thinking I was going to do more humanities-related disciplines. JD Angrist, SR Cohodes, S Dynarski, JB Fullerton, TJ Kane, PA Pathak, Cambridge, MA: Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 13 (1), 138-67, JD Angrist, SR Cohodes, SM Dynarski, PA Pathak, CD Walters, American Economic Review 106 (5), 388-392, Nouvelles citations des articles de cet auteur, Nouveaux articles lis aux travaux de recherche de cet auteur, Professor of Education, Harvard University, Adresse e-mail valide de tc.columbia.edu, Evaluating public programs with close substitutes: The case of Head start. The way Im collecting most of my data is opportunistic in some senseits like data thats generated and out there in the world, either by previous experiments or by government bodies that are implementing or managing programsand Im looking for opportunities to use that sort of data to answer questions about the effects of programs on peoples outcomes. PDF University of California, Berkeley Berkeley Opportunity Lab, University of California, Berkeley , Berkeley, CA, U.S.A. Chris Walters research on the longterm effects of universal pre-school was recently featured in the New York Times. Low-achieving, non-white and poor students stand to gain the most academically from attending charter schools but are less likely to seek charter school enrollment than higher-achieving, more advantaged students who live closer to charter schools. His research focuses on Labor Economics and the Economics of Education. Chris Walters Berkeley Opportunity LabResearch & Resources In my graduate classes, readings, and recent work in top journals in this area, I got interested in the combination of choices and experiments that were on the frontier of the education literature. My research focuses on labor economics and the economics of education, with an emphasis on school performance at the primary and early childhood levels. I was kind of attracted to that set of questions; answering questions about real sources of well-being or lack thereof in peoples lives. : Thats a fun answer. Interpreting tests of school VAM validity. My work also involves developing and applying econometric tools to answer questions of practical interest. For example, for marginal college students in the United States, in my view, some of the best evidence suggests that the return to a year of college for students at the margin between attending a four-year college and not is something in the order of 10% per year or higher. Box PBA 237 Office - P.O. Charter Schools and the Road to College Readiness: The Effects on College Preparation, Attendance and Choice. That question is premised on the idea that the return on human capital investment is largest in the early years of schooling. Celles qui sont suivies d'un astrisque (, Sur la base des exigences lies au financement, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 5 (4), JD Angrist, SM Dynarski, TJ Kane, PA Pathak, CR Walters, Journal of policy Analysis and Management 31 (4), 837-860, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 10 (1), 175-206, JD Angrist, SR Cohodes, SM Dynarski, PA Pathak, CR Walters, Journal of Labor Economics 34 (2), 275-318, A Abdulkadirolu, PA Pathak, J Schellenberg, CR Walters, American Economic Review 110 (5), 1502-39, American Economic Review P&P 100 (2), 239-243, Journal of Political Economy 126 (6), 2179-2223, JD Angrist, PD Hull, PA Pathak, CR Walters, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 132 (2), 871-919, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 7 (4), The Quarterly Journal of Economics 137 (4), 1963-2036, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 138 (1), 363-411, American Economic Review 111 (11), 3663-98.