This paper uses the NLSY to examine 1) the returns to two-year college, 2) whether attendance at a two-year college helps students to transfer to four-year college, and 3) whether reducing tuition would alter attendance by enough to affect labor outcomes. I find that the returns to a year of...

Using data from three waves of Add Health we find that being very attractive reduces a young adult's (ages 18-26) propensity for criminal activity and being unattractive increases it for a number of crimes, ranging from burglary to selling drugs. A variety of tests demonstrate that this result...

Higher education should not be evaluated based on good or bad outcomes, but rather based on value-added. Education can add substantial value even while producing unappealing outcomes, because those outcomes may still be better than realistic alternatives after considering heterogeneity in...

Using data from three waves of Add Health we find that being very attractive reduces a young adult's (ages 18-26) propensity for criminal activity and being unattractive increases it for a number of crimes, ranging from burglary to selling drugs. A variety of tests demonstrate that this result...

There is widespread interest in universal early education, both to promote child development and to support maternal employment. Positive long-term findings from small-scale early education interventions for low-income children in the US have greatly influenced the public discussion. However,...

In this paper, we estimate the rate of return to first degrees, masters degrees and PhDs in Britain using data from the Labour Force Survey. We estimate returns to broad subject groups and more narrowly defined disciplines, distinguishing returns by gender and attempting to control for...

This paper examines differentiation in the recent evolving graduate labour market in Britain. Using a novel statistically derived indicator of graduate jobs, based on job skill requirements in three-digit occupations obtained from the British Skills and Employment Survey series, we analyse...

There has been a rising interest in understanding better the impact of college choices on wages, an interest motivated by concerns about increasing wage inequalities, about increasing costs of elite colleges, and about the perceived increasing roles of highly educated individuals in maintaining...

Understanding the economic payoff to human investments is very important from the standpoint both of individuals and of society. Correctly estimating these impacts necessitates having a well-developed idea of the microeconomic determinants of human behavior. Without this, empirical analyses of...