We estimate small marginal costs and large markups at private colleges in the United States, and discuss implications for the design of financial aid. For identification, we exploit a tightening of credit standards in the PLUS loan program, which decreased enrollment, revenues, and expenditures...

This chapter was written for a book published in India. The anticipated audience for this paper is generally for residents of India. Reading news reports and some academic commentary in India, I find that private higher education is very readily berated and dismissed. This is surprising to me,...

Pressing questions about the merits of market accountability in K-12 education have spawned a large scholarly literature. Unfortunately, much of that literature is of limited relevance, and some of it is misleading. The studies most widely cited in the United States used intense scrutiny of a...

In this paper, we first offer economic arguments in support of greater consideration of user charges to fund public primary and secondary education. Second, to better understand why these economic arguments have not had further influence, a regression analysis shows the factors responsible for...

We show that changes in choice architecture have a large effect on student loan decisions while we do not find significant effects of sizeable interest rate changes. We evaluate the effect of two polices implemented in 2010 by the U.S. Department of Education: (1) the requirement that all...

While student loans continue to be a hot topic from economic, political, and social perspectives, and recent research has focused on the individual outcomes and macroeconomic effects of student borrowers, this paper focuses on a different group of borrowers – parent borrowers, specifically...

We present evidence on how The Quantum Opportunity Program (QOP hereafter) worked in the US. While the program was regarded as successful in the short-term, in the long-run its educational results were modest and its effects on risky behaviors detrimental. Exploiting control group's...

This paper estimates the rate of return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program, an early intervention program targeted toward disadvantaged African-American youth. Estimates of the rate of return to the Perry program are widely cited to support the claim of substantial economic benefits from...