This dissertation consists of three chapters that examine topics in the economics of education. Chapter 1 tests the impact of holding student loan debt on borrowers' post-schooling decisions, with a focus on how it changes the way they evaluate risks when choosing between jobs. Chapter 2 analyzes the impact of an expansion of public-school choice in California on how families sort across schools. Chapter 3 studies the effects of colleges eliminating their application fees, including how it affects applications, enrollment, persistence, and the college's competitor institutions. Broadly, these chapters explore themes around how education is distributed and financed across individuals, what barriers to educational access exist that might reduce efficiency or equity, and how we might evaluate policies that attempt to mitigate these barriers. In Chapter 1, "Student Loan Debt and Risk Preferences on the Job Market", I examine how student loan debt impacts the way that individuals evaluate trade-offs between risk and expected pay when choosing between jobs. I test this relationship directly using a hypothetical choice survey experiment on recent 4-year college graduates in the U.S. In this experiment, I compare participants' risk preferences over jobs at baseline with their preferences over jobs after a random, hypothetical debt shock. I find that an increase in student loan debt has little effect on average on the way individuals make trade-offs between risk and expected pay, but that this masks heterogeneous effects across several participant characteristics. Some participants choose less risky but lower-paying jobs in response to a higher debt level, prioritizing stability to minimize the likelihood of missed monthly payments and default. This response is concentrated among participants who have less familiarity with repayment options, including (actual) non-borrowers and participants who are unfamiliar with income-driven repayment (IDR) plans. Other participants choose riskier, higher-paying jobs in response to the debt shock, emphasizing their priority to maximize expected earnings when debt is higher. This response is concentrated among (actual) borrowers and participants who are familiar with IDR plans, permitting them to rely on the insurance properties of these and other repayment options in the case of low earnings realizations. I also find that a higher debt level changes the way individuals make many other hypothetical life choices such as their likelihood of starting a business and buying a home. In Chapter 2, "School Choice and Student Mobility from Low-Performing Schools: Evidence from the California Open Enrollment Act," my coauthor Keshav Garud and I examine the impacts of expanded public school choice in California on the distribution of students across schools, using a recent policy change in California. School choice policies can provide additional educational opportunities to students that would be otherwise constrained to their neighborhood school, but the effects of such policies depend on the spread of take-up. If take-up rates vary systematically across students by race or socioeconomic status, then school choice policies will change the distribution of students across schools and may change racial or socioeconomic segregation across schools. In this paper, we empirically examine how the California Open Enrollment Act (2010-2016), which increased public school choice for students attending low-achieving K-12 public schools in California, impacted student enrollment patterns by race and socioeconomic status. Using a staggered difference-in-difference approach and an event study, we find that total enrollment at treated schools falls by 1.5% relative to comparison schools as a result of the policy, and that this effect persists for several years. Hispanic student enrollment at treated schools falls by 5.9% relative to comparison schools and also strongly persists over time, with less persistent effects for other racial subgroups. We also find a larger impact of the policy on enrollment of free-and-reduced price meal (FRPM) eligible students than non-FRPM eligible students, such that the share of these lower-income students at treated, low-performing schools decreases in response to this expansion of choice. Our findings suggest that the Open Enrollment Act did expand public schooling options for minority students and low-income students attending low-performing schools in California, enabling them to switch to higher-performing public schools. Given the distribution of students across treated and comparison schools, this especially high mobility of low-income and minority students may have decreased segregation in California K-12 public schools. In Chapter 3, "Eliminating College Application Fees: Impacts on Applications, Enrollment and Competition," I study the effects of colleges offering free applications. While college application fees pale in comparison to the costs of tuition, room, and board, they nonetheless pose a major cost to families. Fee waivers can alleviate this financial cost for low-income families, but come with their own costs in terms of student effort and planning. In this paper, I empirically study the application and enrollment effects of a 4-year college eliminating its application fee, employing both a difference-in-difference design and an event study approach. I find that offering a $0 application fee increases the volume of applications received by a college by 10-15%, increases the college's first-year enrollment of low-income students by 3-7%, and increases the college's first-year enrollment of Black students by 12-15% and Hispanic students by 5-6%, relative to enrollment trends at colleges that did not institute such a policy. I also study how these policies affect a school's competitor institutions, to examine whether this policy might increase access for students who otherwise would not have attended a 4-year college, or whether this policy primarily shuffles students between similar, competing institutions. Evidence of significant competitor effects suggests that at least part of the observed increase in applications and enrollment at the focal college is driven by drawing students away from competitors. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]