Publications of Omari H. Swinton
%% Working Papers
@article{fds50015,
Author = {Omari H. Swinton},
Title = {An "A" for Effort: Should College Dropouts Try
Harder?},
Year = {2006},
Month = {October},
Abstract = {Recent decades have seen a steady increase in college
enrollment rates, which has not been accompanied by a
corresponding increase in graduation rates. If this
discrepancy is at least partly due to insufficient
“effort” exerted by students, policies that aim at
rewarding effort explicitly may succeed at increasing
graduation rates. This paper uses a unique and rich
administrative data set to analyze the impact of the
introduction of a new grading policy on performance and
retention rates at Benedict College, a Historically Black
College in Columbia, South Carolina. According to the new
grading policy, grades for freshmen and sophomore courses
are determined in part by performance on tests and in part
by measures of “effort” such as attendance and class
participation. The policy was intended to inspire a sense of
discipline in students’ attitudes towards academic work,
in the hope of improving learning and graduation rates.
However, the data show that the introduction of the new
grading policy was actually followed by an increase in
dropout rates, disproportionately due to students with
pre-college GPAs above the mean. This paper describes a
simple theoretical model that illustrates how this observed
change can be a result of the interaction between the
increased disutility caused by the larger effort required by
the new policy, and the uncertainly that relates effort to
knowledge grade, an uncertainly that only disappears after
the final grades are assigned. Overall, students with lower
SAT composite scores and lower high school GPAs respond
better to incentivized effort than students with higher SAT
composite scores and higher high school GPAs.},
Key = {fds50015}
}
@article{fds47872,
Author = {Omari H. Swinton},
Title = {The Effects of Effort Grading on Learning},
Year = {2006},
Month = {June},
Abstract = {In the Fall of 2004, Benedict College—a Historically Black
College in Columbia (SC)–began enforcing a new grading
policy called Success Equals Effort. Under this new policy,
students taking freshman and sophomore level courses are
assigned grades that explicitly reward not only content
learning (“knowledge” grade) but also measures of effort
(“effort” grade). This paper examines the effects of
effort grading through two stage least squares and fixed
effect estimates. I find evidence of a strong positive
correlation of “effort” grade and the “knowledge”
grade. Under some restrictions this relationship can be
interpreted as “effort” producing “knowledge”.},
Key = {fds47872}
}
@article{fds47873,
Author = {Omari H. Swinton},
Title = {Grading for Effort: The Success Equals Effort Policy at
Benedict College},
Year = {2006},
Month = {March},
Abstract = {In the Fall of 2004, Benedict College—a Historically Black
College in Columbia (SC)–began enforcing a new grading
policy called Success Equals Effort. Under this new policy,
students taking freshman and sophomore level courses are
assigned grades that explicitly reward not only content
learning (“knowledge” grade) but also measures of effort
(“effort” grade). This paper describes the details of
the policy and the reasons for its adoption, and attempts a
first evaluation of the impact of the grading policy thus
far.},
Key = {fds47873}
}
@article{fds47874,
Author = {Peter Arcidiacono and Alvin Murphy and Omari H.
Swinton},
Title = {Explaining Cross-Racial Differences in Teenage Labor Force
Participation: Results from a General Equilibrium Search
Model},
Year = {2006},
Abstract = {White teenagers are substantially more likely to search for
employment than their black counterparts. This occurs
despite the fact that conditional on race individuals who
come from poorer families are more likely to search and
black teenagers come from poorer families. While differences
in wages between white and black teenagers are small, the
unemployment rate for black teenagers is over twice that of
white teenagers. We develop a general equilibrium search
model where firms are partially able to target their search
based upon demographics. Differences in the labor market
explain half of the gap in the search rates between black
and white teenagers. Removing search targeting substantially
closes the gap between black and white unemployment
rates.},
Key = {fds47874}
}