Spence (1973) noted that individuals' choice of educational quantity--measured by years of schooling--may stem partially from a desire to signal their ability to the labor market. This paper asks if individuals' choice of educational quality--measured by college reputation--may likewise signal...

This paper explores the implications of measuring college productivity in two different dimensions: earning and learning. We compute system-wide measures using administrative data from the country of Colombia that link social security records to students' performance on a national college...

This paper explores whether conditions during early childhood affect the productivity of later human capital investments. We use Romanian administrative data to ask if the benefit of access to better schools is larger for children who experienced better family environments because their parents...

A possible trade-off between greater efficiency and equal opportunity is central to the debate on school vouchers, for instance. Whereas economists since Milton Friedman have argued that school choice would align provider incentives with the interests of consumers and thus lead to increases in...