Roland G. Fryer

Work falls into three major categories: applied theory exploring different aspects of the African-American experience, empirical work examining educational experiments, and work (with Levitt) on racial differences in early childhood. First body of research ranges from early paper on Acting White to recent work on Valuing Diversity. Papers add great insight into emotionally charged topics, and aid both policy analysis and measurement (as in his work on segregation). His second body of work focuses on educational experiments, such as the random assignment of children into the Harlem Children Zone's Promise Academy, which enables him to assess the schools impact on disadvantaged minorities. Also implements his own experiments. He assessed the impact of financial incentives on teachers and students alike. Work is helping to better understand how to lift children out of poverty. With Levitt, work on early childhood differences between the races is fascinating. Recent paper in the American Economic Review uses rich new data, and documents that ability gaps do not seem to exist before one year of age, but appear by two years of age.