This paper decomposes the participation process of a prototypical program into eligibility, awareness, application, acceptance and enrollment. With this decomposition, we determine the sources of unequal participation for different groups, and demonstrate that variables often have very different...

This paper examines the determinants of GED acquisition. high school graduation and postsecondary training and schooling choices. Economic factors determining dropping out are considered. The determinants of high school certification by exam are fundamentally different from the determinants of...

The recent literature on evaluating manpower training programs demonstrates that alternative nonexperimental estimators of the same program produce a array of estimates of program impact. These findings have led to the call for experiments to be used to perform credible program evaluations....

Changes in the skill differential are often used by economic historians to proxy changes in income inequality. According to Jeffrey Williamson and Peter Lindert, American skill differentials rose sharply between 1820 and 1860, which they interpret as increasing income inequality. Using a large,...

Although economic models of training decisions are framed in terms of a company's calculation of the costs and benefits of such training, empirical work has never been able to test this model directly on company behavior. This paper utilizes a unique database to analyze the determinants of the...

The fine structure of earnings is defined by a theoretically meaningful decomposition of the covariance matrix of earnings (or log earnings) time series. A three-element variance components model is proposed for analyzing earnings of young workers. These components are interpreted as the effects...

In this paper we set out some methods that utilize the longitudinal structure of earnings of trainees and a comparison group to estimate the effectiveness of training for the 1976 cohort of CETA trainees. By fitting a components-of-variance model of earnings to the control group, and posing a...

In this paper we report results that suggest that carefully integrated and implemented vocational training and re-entry programs for youthful property offenders can reduce the rate at which such individuals are arrested after release. This result is important since most evaluations of programs...

The current high rates of return to human capital stimulate a supply response via increased investments in education and training. The so increased human capital stock exerts downward pressures on the rates of return that reduce the skill differential in wages. This paper reports estimates of:...

In this paper, we develop a model of technology adoption and economic growth in which households optimally obtain either a concept-based, general' education or a skill-specific, vocational' education. General education is more costly to obtain, but enables workers to operate new technologies...