Adrienne Lucas

@profalucas.bsky.social

7501 Followers 481 Following

Development/Education/Health Economist | Prof and Dept Chair, UDelaware | Research Associate, NBER | Faculty Affiliate, J-PAL | Non-Resident Fellow, CGD | she https://lerner.udel.edu/faculty-staff-directory/adrienne-lucas/

Screen shot that reads Journal Article Editor's Choice When Information is Not Enough: Evidence from a Centralised School Choice System Free Kehinde F Ajayi , Willa H Friedman , Adrienne M Lucas The Economic Journal, Volume 136, Issue 673, January 2026, Pages 26–60, https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueaf046 Published: 13 June 2025 Article history Abstract We implemented a large-scale randomised controlled trial encompassing 900 junior high schools in Ghana, a country with universal secondary school choice, to study whether providing students and parents with information on school characteristics and selection strategies improved outcomes in a centralised school selection mechanism. Information changed households’ preferences and the characteristics of schools to which they applied. Students gained admission to higher value-added schools, yet they were not more likely to matriculate on time or at all. Incomplete school information was not the only friction. Household shocks and inaccurate preference forecasting likely contributed to continued admission deviations.
screen shot with the words "Professional Development Grant for URM Faculty, 2025 Award Winner, Muhammad Usman Taj, Midlands Technical College" and a picture of the winner wearing a window pane (white background) button down shirt.
Picture of UD students, faculty, staff and families outside.
Photo of sunrise over UMN buildings.
Line chart titled "Figure 1. Pipeline for Departments with Doctoral Programs: Percent of Doctoral Students and Faculty Who are Women, 1994-2024" The "Full Professors (T)", green line, was about 7% in 1994 and 18% in 2024.
8 members of the UD economics faculty sit in their academic robes in front of graduating seniors in blue caps and gowns.
Picture of Adrienne Lucas, Jason Christie, Dean Oliver Yao at UD convocation ceremony. They are all wearing academic robes—Brown, UD, and Maryland.
screen shot from NBER website that contains paper title, authors, and abstract: Targeted Education Transfers Reduced Long-Run and Intergenerational Ethnic Inequality in Chile Adrienne M. Lucas, Patrick J. McEwan & David Torres Irribarra Working Paper 33798 DOI 10.3386/w33798 Issue Date May 2025 Since 1991, Chile has provided large, renewable cash grants to indigenous children in lower-income households, conditional on school enrollment. We estimate intent-to-treat effects of grant exposure on indigenous adults and their children, leveraging variation in expected grant exposure across birth cohorts and never-treated adults, and using fixed effects to absorb unobserved variables shared by adults born in the same year and community. Cohorts with the greatest exposure had 0.6 more years of schooling, 10% more hours worked, and 22% higher labor earnings, reducing pre-treatment ethnic differences. Mothers’ exposure increased their children’s early-grade test scores and reduced second-generation grant receipt.
White sheet cake with pictures of Barton, Thomas, and Olga.
Washington monument around sunrise with grass in foreground and clouds above.
Brown and white dog on green grass, looking to the side.
Screen shot of title page from NBER website. When Given Discretion Teachers Did Not Shirk: Evidence from Remedial Education in Secondary Schools Sabrin A. Beg, Anne E. Fitzpatrick, Jason T. Kerwin, Adrienne Lucas & Khandker Wahedur Rahman Working Paper 33242 DOI 10.3386/w33242 Issue Date December 2024 Public-sector organizations face a tradeoff: allowing workers discretion at the point of service to adapt to local needs, versus rigid harmonization to ensure uniform service delivery. We examine this tradeoff in the context of secondary schools in Odisha, India, where the centrally set curriculum is nearly 4 grades above the learning levels of the mean student. We conduct a randomized intervention that assigned schools to either a rigid or a flexible version of a remedial learning intervention that displaced the curriculum. We compare learning outcomes and teaching quality to the status quo. Both interventions increased learning by 0.11SD, about 60 percent of a year of learning, with gains throughout the learning distribution. We find no crowd-out of grade-level mastery, and no change in the likelihood of earning passing Board Marks one year later. Discretion did not lower the quality of implementation or induce shirking. Allowing teachers flexibility to adjust classroom content to student needs was beneficial and had limited downsides.
Stephanie Bonds standing behind a podium, speaking into a microphone.
Brown and white dog in the sun
The Bluesky notification “Heather Long followed you back.”
Picture of 12 people standing in front of an off-white RV.
My dog, Spencer.
Picture of Dar es Salaam with church in foreground and ocean behind.
screen shot of title (managing to learn) and abstract of paper.
UD branded pen and mint
picture of Manaswini in a black top and grey blazer
screen shot of title and abstract of paper