Welcome
I am a postdoc at the Center for Law & Economics at ETH Zurich, in the group of Elliott Ash. I hold a Ph.D. in economics from LMU Munich where my supervisors were Ludger Woessmann and Davide Cantoni. I was a Visiting Doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University in 2019/2020, and obtained my Master's degrees from the London School of Economics and University College London. I will be on the Job Market in 2023/24.
I am an applied microeconomist interested in labor/education economics, public economics, economics of religion, and AI & economics. One area of my research analyzes how school curricula shape student achievement, attitudes and beliefs, choices, and long-term labor market outcomes. Another area of my research employs tools from AI, NLP, and computational linguistics to study how economic policies and educational experiments affect employees and students.
My Ph.D. thesis was awarded the Prize for Best Dissertation in 2021/2022 from the German Economic Association, Section on Economics of Education, and the Fürther Ludwig Erhard Prize of 2023.
Research
Job Market Paper
Evolution vs. Creationism in the Classroom:
The Lasting Effects of Science Education
Reject and Resubmit, Quarterly Journal of Economics
Working Paper: Download. Twitter thread here. Short video presentation here.
Coverage: VoxEU, Education Next, EconPol, Genetic Literacy Project, FutureEd, Leibniz Association, Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings (Video), GlobeNewswire, YahooFinanceNews, Post Online Magazine, Bildungsklick (German), Verbaende.com (German), NNZ-News (German)
Working Papers
Can Schools Change Religious Attitudes? Evidence from
German State Reforms of Compulsory Religious Educationwith Ludger Woessmann and Larissa Zierow
Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Human Resources
Working Paper: Download. Twitter thread here.
Coverage: VoxTalks (Podcast), VoxEU Column, CESifo Forum, The Guardian, Helsinki Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German), Bayerischer Rundfunk (German), Spiegel Online (German), Bild.de (German), n-tv (German)
The Language of Contract:
Legal Amenities in Collective Bargaining Agreements
Genetic Endowments, Educational Outcomes and
the Mediating Influence of School Quality
with Paul Hufe and Marc Stoeckli
Working Paper: Download. Twitter thread here.
Coverage: Helsinki Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German), Passauer Neue Presse (German), Bildungsklick (German), Verbaende.com
Measuring Student Mindsets at Scale in Resource-constrained Settings:
SMS Toolkit with an Application to Brazil during the Pandemic
with Guilherme Lichand, Elliott Ash, Jairo Rosero, Carlos Doria, Ana Trinidade, Eric Bettinger, and David Yeager
Working Paper: Download.
The Unintended Consequences of School Curricula Reforms: Examining Spillover Effects of US Education Standards
with M. Danish Shakeel
Working Paper: Download.
[Older versions: Harvard PEPG WP, Brown Annenberg Institute WP, ifo WP]
Coverage: Forbes, Innovations in STEM Teacher Preparation, The Education Exchange (Podcast)
Work in Progress
The Opportunities and Challenges of ML-based
Targeting for Educational Technologies:
Evidence from Brazil in the Aftermath of the Pandemicwith Guilherme Lichand, Elliott Ash, Jairo Rosero,
Mario Curiki, Carlos Doria, David Yeager and Eric BettingerData Analysis on-going
The Political Economy of Religious Language:
Evidence from the United States CongressDoes the timing of income payments matter for households?
Evidence from random within-month variation of child allowance payments
Policy papers (non-refereed)
How are Low-Income Families Faring in the Corona Crisis?
with Vera Freundl, Katia Werkmeister and Larissa Zierow
Download: ifo Schnelldienst, 07/2021
Coverage: Tagesschau.de (German), Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (German), Business Insider (German), Der Standard (Austrian)
Teaching
Lecture: Text Data in Business and Economics, Fall 2023, Basel University.
Teaching Material (Slides and Jupyter Notebooks) available on Github
Workshop: NLP and Computational Linguistics in Economics, Spring 2024 (sched.), Princeton University.
Teaching Material (Slides and Jupyter Notebooks) available on Github
Students interested in writing Master's, Bachelor's, or Seminar Theses in the areas of Education/Labor/Public/Political Econ. as well as NLP/AI & Econ., please reach out via email: aroldb@ethz.ch
CV
You can find my CV here.
Contact
Looking forward to answering your email
ETH Zurich
Center for Law & Economics
IFW E41
Haldeneggsteig 4
CH-8092 Zurich+41 (0)44/26919
Download Photo of Benjamin W. Arold
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