University graduates are two to five times as likely to hold a degree in the field that their parents graduated from. To estimate how much of this association is caused by the education choices of parents, I exploit admission thresholds to university programs in a regression discontinuity...

Family and social networks are widely believed to influence important life decisions but identifying their causal effects is notoriously difficult. Using admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger siblings' college options, we present evidence from the United States,...