This dissertation is composed of three essays that address important questions within the fields of labor economics and the economics of education. In Chapter 1, I study the effect of student loan delinquency, default, and student loan servicers on borrowers' financial outcomes. Rates of student loan delinquency and default are relatively high compared with other forms of consumer credit, and these events can be costly for both borrowers and the federal government. Using consumer credit panel data, I document a previously unexamined mechanism for student loan delinquency and default – student loan servicers – and provide new evidence on the effect of student loan default on borrowers’ broader measures of financial distress, credit access, and borrowing. I exploit random assignment of student loan borrowers to the federal government contractors that handle the repayment process on all federal student loans, student loan servicers, to implement an instrumental variables design. I find that being assigned to a higher-default servicer increases the likelihood of both delinquency and default, but this effect does not spillover onto borrowers’ other credit outcomes. Using an event study approach, I show borrowers experience increasing rates of financial distress across non-student loan credit products in the quarters leading up to student loan delinquency and that credit score declines from delinquency and default are relatively short-lived. These results suggest that averting a servicer-induced default does not yield considerable benefits for marginal borrowers' credit outcomes, but that servicers are meaningful drivers of student loan repayment outcomes. In Chapter 2, joint with Evan Riehl, we examine how incentives for test prep varied between math and English language arts (ELA) on U.S. state accountability exams. We collected data on exam structure for grade 3 to 8 tests in six states that are the setting for most U.S. research in literatures where accountability matters. We show that math exams typically measured ability more precisely for students on the margin of achieving proficiency. This gave educators an incentive to spend more time preparing students for math tests than for ELA tests, consistent with the common finding of larger math effects in the literature. In Chapter 3, joint with Natasha Jha, Giulia Olivero, and Revathy Suryanarayana, we study how exposure to female employment during World War II influenced the education and labor market outcomes of the next generation of women. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we exploit variation in wartime exposure across commuting zones, proxied by factory conversions per capita. Higher factory conversions are associated with increased educational attainment but lower labor force participation at younger ages among Baby Boomer women.