Ofer Malamud
Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
PhD, Economics, Harvard University, 2004
Ofer Malamud is an economist focused on education policy from an international perspective. His research is concentrated in three substantive areas: educational investments over the life course, the role of technology for the development of children’s human capital, and the effect of general and specific education on labor market outcomes. He has studied these topics in a wide range of institutional settings across countries such as Britain, Chile, Israel, Korea, Mexico, Mongolia, Peru, Romania, and the United States.
Malamud is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the CESifo Research Network. He also serves as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Before joining Northwestern, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Current Research
Teacher Effort in the Classroom: This project, coauthored with Andreea Mitrut, Cristian Pop-Eleches, and Miguel Urquiola, examines how teacher effort varies with student characteristics using novel student-specific measures of relative teacher effort in 87 Romanian high schools. Our preliminary analysis yields four main findings. First, teachers direct more effort towards disruptive students, consistent with the demands of classroom management. Second, teachers direct more effort towards lower-ability students, suggesting that instructional effort is compensatory. Third, girls receive systematically less effort from teachers than boys, but these gender differences are eliminated, or even reversed, when conditioning on ability and disruptiveness. Fourth, teachers are less likely to enjoy teaching in more disruptive and lower-ability classrooms. We consider the implications of these findings for debates on rewarding and retaining teachers.
Understanding the adoption and diffusion of educational technology: Evidence from Peru: This project explores the adoption and diffusion of an online math curriculum for 4th to 6th-grade students, called Connecta Ideas (CI). Collaborating with the Ministry of Education in Peru, Malamud and his colleagues randomly assigned 188 primary schools in Lima to four treatment arms: (i) an intensive intervention that paired teachers with coordinators to assist with take-up and use, (ii) a low-cost intervention that provides teachers with virtual workshops to encourage take-up and use, (iii) a school-wide intervention providing virtual workshops to all teachers, and (iv) a control group that receives no treatment. They will examine which teachers are more likely to adopt this online math curriculum, and whether there are spillovers to other teachers, and how this educational technology is diffused to students. The results will inform policymakers who are seeking to scale up this program in Peru and other parts of Latin America, as well as the adoption of education technology in other settings.
Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Mongolia: There is renewed interest in the potential for technical and vocational education to improve labor market outcomes in developed and developing countries. An initiative by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has sought to alleviate the mismatch between the supply and demand for skilled labor in Mongolia by funding equipment upgrades in vocational schools. Malamud is among the principal investigators leading the effort to analyze the impact of these equipment upgrades and vocational education in Mongolia more generally. The random assignment of applicants to trades in 10 TVET schools allows for a compelling evaluation of the impact of admission to a TVET school. Preliminary results indicate that admission to, and graduation from, technical and vocational schools leads to improved employment prospects and higher earnings, especially for women. There is also evidence of improved knowledge in the chosen trades and higher work intensity among women.
Selected Publications
Aulagnon, R., J. Cristia, S. Cueto, and O. Malamud. Forthcoming. Streaks to success: The effects of highlighting streaks on student effort and learning. Economics of Education Review.
Mitrut, A., C. Pop-Eleches, M. Urquiola, and O. Malamud. Forthcoming. Self-, peer- and teacher perceptions under school tracking. Review of Economics and Statistics.
Goff, L., O. Malamud, C. Pop-Eleches, and M. Urquiola. 2025. Interactions between family and school environments. The Journal of Human Resources 60(3): 907–49.
Kaestner, R. and O. Malamud. 2023. Headstrong girls and dependent boys: Gender differences in the labor market returns to child behavior. ILR Review 76: 112–34.
Malamud, O., A. Mitrut, and C. Pop-Eleches. 2023. The effect of education on mortality and health: Evidence from a schooling expansion in Romania. Journal of Human Resources 58: 561–92.
Gallego F., O. Malamud, and C. Pop-Eleches. 2020. Parental monitoring and children's Internet use: The role of information, control, and salience. Journal of Public Economics 188: 1-18.
