In 2001, amendments to the Higher Education Act made people convicted of drug offenses ineligible for federal financial aid for up to two years after their conviction. Using rich data on educational outcomes and drug charges in the NLSY 1997, we show that this law change had a large negative...

We examine the impact of a temporary price shock on the attainment of undocumented college students enrolled in a large urban college system. In spring 2002, the City University of New York reversed its policy of charging in-state tuition to undocumented students. By fall 2002, the state...

This paper examines the impact of state merit-aid programs on the labor market attachment of high school-aged youths. The labor force participation rate of teenagers has fallen substantially in recent decades, coinciding with the introduction of merit-aid programs. These programs reduce the...

In the Fall of 2000, the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant program dramatically changed the menu of college prices offered to residents of the District of Columbia. The program allowed residents of D.C. to attend public institutions in Maryland and Virginia and pay the same tuition as residents of...

The 1997 creation of the Hope and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits marked a dramatic shift in the way in which federal support for college expenses is distributed to students and their families. Unlike other aid programs, the tax credits have exceptionally broad eligibility requirements, and there...

Three tax credits benefit households who pay tuition and fees for higher education. The credits have been justified as an investment: generating more educated people and thus more earnings and externalities associated with education. The credits have also been justified purely as tax cuts to...

The current level and form of subsidization of college education is often rationalized by appeal to capital constraints on individuals. Because borrowing against human capital is difficult, capital constraints can lead to nonoptimal outcomes unless government intervenes. We develop a simple...

Our paper uses institutional-level panel data to testwhether an increase in the number of institutionally funded National Merit Scholarship (NMS) winners at an institution isassociated with a reduction in the number of Pell Grant recipients at the institution. We find that, other factors held...

We study the effects of a change in financial aid policy introduced by a Northeastern university in 1998. Prior to that time, the university's financial aid packages for low-income students consisted of grants, loans, and campus jobs. After the change, the entire loan portion of the package for...

Though economists have spent the past decade analyzing the rising payoff to schooling, we know much less about the responses of youth or the effectiveness of policies aimed at influencing those decisions. States and the federal government currently spend more than $53 billion annually, hoping to...