We apply the unordered monotonicity setting of Heckman and Pinto (2018) to estimate the distribution of response types and the counterfactual outcomes associated with the choice of a STEM or non-STEM college. Instrumental variation is induced by the proximity to universities offering STEM and/or...

This paper provides estimates of the short-term individual returns to Higher Education (HE) in the United Kingdom, focusing on the effects of attending HE on the labour market outcomes for dropouts. Results show differential labour market outcomes for dropouts vs. individuals who have never...

We investigate the wage return to studying economics by leveraging a policy that prevented students with low introductory grades from declaring the major. Students who barely met the GPA threshold to major in economics earned \$22,000 (46\%) higher annual early-career wages than they would have...

The value of a college degree is impacted by how it is financed. Using 1968-2011 PSID surveys we construct a synthetic panel of US high school and college graduates and derive a model of their respective incomes, accounting for taxes, unemployment, retirement and mortality. With CRRA utility,...

Evidence on educational returns and the factors that determine the demand for schooling in developing countries is extremely scarce. Building on previous studies that show individuals underestimating the returns to schooling, we use two surveys from Tanzania to estimate both the actual and...

Using detailed data from a unique survey of high school graduates in Germany, we document a gender gap in expected full-time earnings of more than 15%. We apply a regression-compatible Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and find that especially differences in coefficients help explain the gap. In...

We conduct an empirical simulation exercise that gauges the plausible impact of increased rates of college attainment on a variety of measures of income inequality and economic insecurity. Using two different methodological approaches-a distributional approach and a causal parameter approach-we...

This paper examines the effects of skill advantages at age six on different types of parental investments, and long-run outcomes up to age 27. We exploit exogenous variation in skills due to school entry rules, combining 20 years of Chilean administrative records with a regression discontinuity...

Recent policy proposals have discussed eliminating tuition at public 2-year colleges in order to raise college enrollment among students with low parental income and improve life-cycle earnings outcomes. This paper calculates the elasticity of college enrollment to public 2-year college tuition...

Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education requires a solid grasp of the impact of student autonomy on learning. In this paper, we estimate the effect of an increased autonomy policy for higher-performing students on short- and longer-term school outcomes. We exploit an...