From the Field to the Classroom: The Boll Weevil's Impact on Education in Rural Georgia
研究了20世纪初美国南方棉花减产对儿童入学率的影响，发现棉花减少10%使黑人入学率提高2%，解释了1914-1929年间种族入学率差距缩小的30%。
I examine how production of a child labor–intensive crop (cotton) affected schooling in the early twentieth-century American South. Because cotton production may be endogenous, presence of an agricultural pest (the boll weevil) is employed as an instrument. Using newly collected county-level data for Georgia, I find a 10 percent reduction in cotton caused a 2 percent increase in black enrollment rate, but had little effect on white enrollment. The shift away from cotton following the boll weevil's arrival explains 30 percent of the narrowing of the racial differential in enrollment rates between 1914 and 1929.