IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ran/wpaper/wr-843-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is A Dream Deferred a Dream Denied? College Enrollment and Time-Varying Opportunity Costs

Author

Listed:
  • Francisco Perez-Arce

Abstract

A public college in Mexico City randomly assigns applicants into a group that can immediately enroll and a group that can only do so after one year. The author shows that the standard model of educational decisions predicts no (or minimal) effect of deferral on educational attainment. He surveyed the applicants to this college for the 2007/2008 academic year. Using data from that survey, he finds that, one and a half years after the first group enrolled, individuals in that group were 19 percentage points more likely to be enrolled than those that had to wait. He finds that one additional slot increases the attainment of about 0.3 individuals of the applicant pool and that offering them to individuals of poorer backgrounds has an even larger effect. He proposes a decision-making model where wages (and opportunity costs) vary due to a random component. He derives testable implications of the model and show that they are verified empirically. He estimates the parameters of the model and show that the model can explain the observed patterns under reasonable assumptions. He uses the estimated model to project the long-term of deferred admission on long-term attainment for different groups of applicants.

Suggested Citation

  • Francisco Perez-Arce, 2013. "Is A Dream Deferred a Dream Denied? College Enrollment and Time-Varying Opportunity Costs," Working Papers WR-843-1, RAND Corporation.
  • Handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-843-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/WR800/WR843-1/RAND_WR843-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas J. Kane, 2007. "Evaluating the Impact of the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant Program," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(3).
    2. Lee, Bong-Soo & Ingram, Beth Fisher, 1991. "Simulation estimation of time-series models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2-3), pages 197-205, February.
    3. David Atkin, 2016. "Endogenous Skill Acquisition and Export Manufacturing in Mexico," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 2046-2085, August.
    4. Gary S. Becker, 1962. "Investment in Human Capital: A Theoretical Analysis," NBER Chapters, in: Investment in Human Beings, pages 9-49, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Jacobson, Louis S & LaLonde, Robert J & Sullivan, Daniel G, 1993. "Earnings Losses of Displaced Workers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(4), pages 685-709, September.
    6. Robert Bozick, 2009. "Job opportunities, economic resources, and the postsecondary destinations of American youth," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 46(3), pages 493-512, August.
    7. Pakes, Ariel & Pollard, David, 1989. "Simulation and the Asymptotics of Optimization Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(5), pages 1027-1057, September.
    8. Duryea, Suzanne & Arends-Kuenning, Mary, 2003. "School Attendance, Child Labor and Local Labor Market Fluctuations in Urban Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 1165-1178, July.
    9. Philip Oreopoulos & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2011. "Priceless: The Nonpecuniary Benefits of Schooling," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(1), pages 159-184, Winter.
    10. David S. Lee, 2009. "Training, Wages, and Sample Selection: Estimating Sharp Bounds on Treatment Effects," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(3), pages 1071-1102.
    11. Harris Dellas & Plutarchos Sakellaris, 2003. "On the cyclicality of schooling: theory and evidence," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 55(1), pages 148-172, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francisco Perez-Arce, 2015. "Is a Dream Deferred a Dream Denied? College Enrollment and Time-Varying Opportunity Costs," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 33-61.
    2. repec:ran:wpaper:843 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Aitor Lacuesta & Sergio Puente & Ernesto Villanueva, 2020. "The schooling response to a sustained increase in low-skill wages: evidence from Spain 1989–2009," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 457-499, December.
    4. Hansen, Lars Peter & Heaton, John & Luttmer, Erzo G J, 1995. "Econometric Evaluation of Asset Pricing Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(2), pages 237-274.
    5. Falch, Ranveig, 2021. "How Do People Trade Off Resources Between Quick and Slow Learners?," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 5/2021, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    6. Xintong Wang & Carlos A. Flores & Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, 2020. "The Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on the Long-Term Health of Veterans: A Bounds Analysis," Center for Policy Research Working Papers 234, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    7. Blimpo, Moussa P. & Pugatch, Todd, 2021. "Entrepreneurship education and teacher training in Rwanda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    8. John R. Graham & Hyunseob Kim & Si Li & Jiaping Qiu, 2019. "Employee Costs of Corporate Bankruptcy," NBER Working Papers 25922, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Cécile Bonneau, 2020. "The Concentration of investment in education in the US (1970-2018)," Working Papers halshs-02875965, HAL.
    10. Calvet, Laurent E. & Czellar, Veronika, 2015. "Through the looking glass: Indirect inference via simple equilibria," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 185(2), pages 343-358.
    11. Orsa Kekezi & Ron Boschma, 2021. "Returns to migration after job loss—The importance of job match," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(6), pages 1565-1587, September.
    12. Kristensen, Dennis & Shin, Yongseok, 2012. "Estimation of dynamic models with nonparametric simulated maximum likelihood," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 167(1), pages 76-94.
    13. Geweke, J. & Joel Horowitz & Pesaran, M.H., 2006. "Econometrics: A Bird’s Eye View," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0655, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    14. Øivind A. Nilsen & Magne Vange, 2019. "Intermittent Price Changes in Production Plants: Empirical Evidence Using Monthly Data," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 81(1), pages 98-122, February.
    15. Philip Jung & Moritz Kuhn, 2019. "Earnings Losses and Labor Mobility Over the Life Cycle," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 678-724.
    16. Hajivassiliou, Vassilis A. & Ruud, Paul A., 1986. "Classical estimation methods for LDV models using simulation," Handbook of Econometrics, in: R. F. Engle & D. McFadden (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 40, pages 2383-2441, Elsevier.
    17. Zila, Eric & Kukacka, Jiri, 2023. "Moment set selection for the SMM using simple machine learning," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 366-391.
    18. Arenas, Andreu & Malgouyres, Clément, 2018. "Countercyclical school attainment and intergenerational mobility," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 97-111.
    19. Blake LeBaron, "undated". "Technical Trading Rules and Regime Shifts in Foreign Exchange," Working papers _007, University of Wisconsin - Madison.
    20. Michelle Haynes & Richard Upward & Peter Wright, 2002. "Estimating the wage costs of inter- and intra- sectoral adjustment," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 138(2), pages 229-253, June.
    21. Liesenfeld, Roman & Breitung, Jörg, 1998. "Simulation based methods of moments in empirical finance," Tübinger Diskussionsbeiträge 136, University of Tübingen, School of Business and Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-843-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benson Wong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lpranus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.