This paper studies the impact of exam luck on individuals’ education and labor market success. We leverage unique features of the Norwegian education system that produce random variation in the content of the exams taken by students at the end of high school. Lucky students take exams in...

The total return to higher education is the rate of return based on earnings plus non-monetary private and social benefits beyond earnings that captures higher education's contribution to development.A theory of endogenous development offers a new scholarly contribution where firm and household...

We study the labor market returns to a State guaranteed loan used to finance university degrees in Chile. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that marginally eligible students forego vocational education in favor of universities but reduce their probability of graduation. Despite...

This paper provides a conceptual framework for the articles that follow in this special issue of the Journal of Education Finance by exploring how the external social benefits of higher education contribute to higher sustainable rates of per capita development of families and nations. It...

Abstract The new millennium brought with it a new challenge. Students reaching higher education were not only greater in number, they were also less prepared than their predecessors. This caused a sharp deterioration in the quality of the entire higher education system, which in turn affected...

We analyze mismatches between local labor markets and higher education enrollments in 22 educational fields across 137 mesoregions in Brazil between 2009 and 2016 using a two-stage regression model. Local labor markets have a significant effect on enrollment rates by field in higher education...

In 2010, Congress reauthorized the Post-9/11 GI Bill by changing reimbursement rates from widely-varying by-state maximums to a nationwide limit. This policy created exogenous variation in the changes in reimbursement rates in direction and magnitude for veterans at private universities. We...

This paper surveys the theoretical approaches used in the literature to study the phenomenon of delayed graduation and university dropout. The classical human capital model does not contemplate failure, which the amended human capital model does. Delayed graduation and university dropout are two...

This paper surveys the theoretical approaches used in the literature to study the phenomenon of delayed graduation and university dropout. The classical human capital model does not contemplate failure, which the amended human capital model does. Delayed graduation and university dropout are two...

This paper investigates the long-term impact on earnings of attending a tuition-free, top-quality university in Brazil. We identify the causal effect through a sharp discontinuity in an admission process based on test scores. If admitted, low-income students are found to increase their earnings...