From 1995 to 2015, the aggregate college completion rate in the US increased from 22.9% to 33.5%. Yet, completion trends differed markedly for individuals from different family backgrounds. This paper considers the extent to which trends in college preparedness contributed to the growth in...

Many government policies affect incentives to acquire human capital. Two workhorse models dominate the literature analyzing these policies: Learning by Doing (LBD) and Ben-Porath (BP). This paper makes two novel findings related to these models. First, LBD and BP generate different predictions...

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a central source of US labor market data. We show that, for a few thousand dollars, researchers can quickly design and implement their own online survey to supplement the CPS. The survey closely follows core features of the CPS, ensuring that outcomes are...

Economists have recently begun using independent online surveys to collect national labor market data. Questions remain over the quality of such data. This paper provides an approach to address these concerns. Our case study is the Real-Time Population Survey (RPS), a novel online survey of the...