IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v36y2023i4p1667-1702..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tuition, Debt, and Human Capital

Author

Listed:
  • Rajashri Chakrabarti
  • Vyacheslav Fos
  • Andres Liberman
  • Constantine Yannelis
  • Tarun Ramadorai

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of college tuition on student debt and human capital accumulation. We exploit data from a random sample of undergraduate students in the United States and implement a research design that instruments for realized tuition with relatively large changes to the advertised tuition of students who enrolled at the same school in different cohorts. We find that $5,000 in higher tuition causally reduces the probability of graduating with a graduate degree by 3.1 percentage points and increases student debt by $1,480. Higher tuition also leads to a decline in mortgage balances and an increase in credit card delinquencies.Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Suggested Citation

  • Rajashri Chakrabarti & Vyacheslav Fos & Andres Liberman & Constantine Yannelis & Tarun Ramadorai, 2023. "Tuition, Debt, and Human Capital," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 36(4), pages 1667-1702.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:36:y:2023:i:4:p:1667-1702.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhac065
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • H81 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Governmental Loans; Loan Guarantees; Credits; Grants; Bailouts
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions

    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:oup:rfinst:v:36:y:2023:i:4:p:1667-1702.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.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.