Racial inequality in economic outcomes, particularly among the college educated, persists throughout US society. Scholars debate whether this inequality stems from racial differences in human capital (e.g., college selectivity, GPA, college major) or employer discrimination against black job...

This paper studies the causal impacts of public universities on the outcomes of their marginally admitted students. I use administrative admission records spanning all 35 public universities in Texas, which collectively enroll 10 percent of American public university students, to systematically...

The reversing achievement gap across genders observed in many countries has led to a heated debate on the persistent gap in academia and other top fields. Using Turkish administrative data and the particular institutional characteristics, this pa- per aims to analyze the gender gap in...

This paper provides findings from the UK Labour Force Surveys from 1996 to 2003 on the financial private returns to a degree the "college premium". The data covers a decade when the university participation rate doubled yet we find no significant evidence that the mean return to a degree dropped...

I combine a regression discontinuity design with rich data on academic and labor market outcomes for a large sample of Florida students to identify the returns to four-year college for students on the academic margin of college admission. In addition, I develop a theoretical model of college...

We explore the forces that shape the development of aspirations and the achievement of grades during high school and the role that these aspirations, grades, and other variables play in educational outcomes such as going to university and graduating. We find that parental expectations and peer...

This paper studies educational choices in a signaling setting in segmented labor markets. We show that in the presence of heterogeneous working ability imperfectly correlated with schooling costs, equilibria characterized by overeducation may arise. The quality of education is crucial in...

We develop a model of college assignment as a large contest wherein students with heterogeneous abilities compete for seats at vertically differentiated colleges through the acquisition of productive human capital. We use a continuum model to approximate the outcomes of a game with large, but...

This study attempts to estimate pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns to college education for academically marginal students in Korea. The Korean government limits the number of admission slots at each college by assigning a binding quota for each year. An increase in the quota admits more...

At the start of the 2020 school year, some colleges chose to reopen in person while others offered primarily online classes. Why? Colleges with higher shares of revenue independent of students being on campus were less likely to reopen in person. Larger shares of revenue attributed to in-person...