A big congratulations to Chasys Hoagland who successfully defended her PhD thesis today.

Chasya's main paper is on black women's hair styles and how people react to them using a very neat experiment. From the results it looks like hair styles affect perceptions of worker quality if there is imperfect information, but not if there is strong information about quality.

She also has a paper on the different effects of test scores, grades, and self-perception of ability in math and English on schooling outcomes and subsequent earnings. Even controlling for test scores and grades there is a strong effect of perceived abiility on earning, although not much effect on schooling outcomes.