This paper examines the distributional impacts of direct college costs - that is, whether the response of educational decisions to college costs varies by student characteristics. The primary obstacle in estimating these effects is the endogeneity of schooling costs. To overcome this issue, I...

I study the size and sources of the monetary return to college achievement as measured by cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA). I rst present evidence that the return to achievement is large and statistically signi cant. I nd, however, that this masks variation in the return across dierent...

This paper examines the distributional impacts of direct college costs { that is, whether the response of educational decisions to college costs varies by student characteristics. The primary obstacle in estimating these eects is the endogeneity of schooling costs. To overcome this issue, I use...

We study the relationship between age and literacy skills in Canada, Norway and the U.S. – countries that represent a wide range of literacy outcomes -- using data from the 1994 and 2003 International Adult Literacy Surveys. In cross-sectional data there is a weak negative partial...

Literacy is central to the improvement and betterment of any society. Individuals cannot fully engage in social and political discourse, and are more likely to become less-than-equals in society without basic literacy to pursue their goals. On the individual level, more literate individuals tend...

L’alphabétisme est capital pour l’amélioration de toute société. Tout un chacun ne peut participer entièrement au discours social et politique, et aura sans doute une position inférieure en société, s’il ne possède pas l’alphabétisme de base lui permettant d’atteindre ses...

I study the size and sources of the monetary return to college achievement as measured by cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA). I first present evidence that the return to achievement is large and statistically significant. I find, however, that this masks variation in the return across...

This paper uses detailed administrative data from one of the largest community colleges in the United States to quantify the extent to which academic performance depends on students being of similar race or ethnicity to their instructors. To address the concern of endogenous sorting, we use both...

Using U.S. and Canadian census data I exploit the massive out migration of approximately 1 million French-Canadians who moved mainly to New England between 1865 and 1930 to look at how the educational attainment and enrollment patterns of their descendants compare with those of same aged...

Using the nationally representative longitudinal Youth in Transition Survey, this paper examines the argument that inferior educational outcomes of various visible minorities and immigrants can be attributed to their socio-economic disadvantages, while superior outcomes of other visible...