IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hka/wpaper/2012-002.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Equilibrium Tuition, Applications, Admissions and Enrollment in the College Market

Author

Listed:
  • Chao Fu

    (University of Wisconsin, Department of Economics)

Abstract

I develop and estimate a structural equilibrium model of the college market. Students, having heterogeneous abilities and preferences, make college application decisions, subject to uncertainty and application costs. Colleges, observing only noisy measures of student ability, choose tuition and admissions policies to compete for more able students. Tuition, applications, admissions and enrollment are joint outcomes from a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. I estimate the structural parameters of the model using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, via a three-step procedure to deal with potential multiple equilibria. In counterfactual experiments, I use the model first to examine the extent to which college enrollment can be increased by expanding the supply of colleges, and then to assess the importance of various measures of student ability.

Suggested Citation

  • Chao Fu, 2012. "Equilibrium Tuition, Applications, Admissions and Enrollment in the College Market," Working Papers 2012-002, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    • Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2012-002
    Note: M
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Fu_JPEJan_2012.pdf
    File Function: First version, January 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen V. Cameron & James J. Heckman, 1998. "Life Cycle Schooling and Dynamic Selection Bias: Models and Evidence for Five Cohorts of American Males," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(2), pages 262-333, April.
    2. Andrea Moro, 2003. "The Effect Of Statistical Discrimination On Black-White Wage Inequality: Estimating A Model With Multiple Equilibria," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(2), pages 467-500, May.
    3. Hector Chade & Gregory Lewis & Lones Smith, 2014. "Student Portfolios and the College Admissions Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(3), pages 971-1002.
    4. McFadden, Daniel, 1989. "A Method of Simulated Moments for Estimation of Discrete Response Models without Numerical Integration," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(5), pages 995-1026, September.
    5. Jessica S. Howell, 2010. "Assessing the Impact of Eliminating Affirmative Action in Higher Education," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 113-166, January.
    6. Arcidiacono, Peter & Nicholson, Sean, 2005. "Peer effects in medical school," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 327-350, February.
    7. Peter Arcidiacono, 2005. "Affirmative Action in Higher Education: How Do Admission and Financial Aid Rules Affect Future Earnings?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(5), pages 1477-1524, September.
    8. Christopher Avery & Jonathan Levin, 2010. "Early Admissions at Selective Colleges," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2125-2156, December.
    9. Stacy Berg Dale & Alan B. Krueger, 2002. "Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1491-1527.
    10. Erik Meijer & Jelmer Ypma, 2008. "A Simple Identification Proof for a Mixture of Two Univariate Normal Distributions," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 25(1), pages 113-123, June.
    11. Dennis Epple & Richard Romano & Holger Sieg, 2006. "Admission, Tuition, and Financial Aid Policies in the Market for Higher Education," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 885-928, July.
    12. Mailath George J. & Okuno-Fujiwara Masahiro & Postlewaite Andrew, 1993. "Belief-Based Refinements in Signalling Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 241-276, August.
    13. Stephen V. Cameron & James J. Heckman, 1998. "Life Cycle Schooling and Dynamic Selection Bias: Models and Evidence for Five Cohorts," NBER Working Papers 6385, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Audrey Light & Wayne Strayer, 2002. "From Bakke To Hopwood: Does Race Affect College Attendance And Completion?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 34-44, February.
    15. Keane, Michael P & Wolpin, Kenneth I, 2001. "The Effect of Parental Transfers and Borrowing Constraints on Educational Attainment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1051-1103, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gianluca Violante & Giovanni Gallipoli & Costas Meghir, 2005. "Education Decisions, Equilibrium Policies and Wages Dispersion," 2005 Meeting Papers 522, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Brant Abbott & Giovanni Gallipoli & Costas Meghir & Giovanni L. Violante, 2019. "Education Policy and Intergenerational Transfers in Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(6), pages 2569-2624.
    3. Brant Abbott & Giovanni Gallipoli & Costas Meghir & Giovanni L. Violante, 2013. "Education Policy�and Intergenerational Transfers in Equilibrium," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1887R2, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised May 2018.
    4. Dennis Epple & Richard Romano & Sinan Sarpça & Holger Sieg, 2013. "The U.S. Market for Higher Education: A General Equilibrium Analysis of State and Private Colleges and Public Funding Policies," NBER Working Papers 19298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Chao Fu, 2012. "Equilibrium Tuition, Applications, Admissions and Enrollment in the College Market," PIER Working Paper Archive 12-013, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    2. Chao Fu, 2014. "Equilibrium Tuition, Applications, Admissions, and Enrollment in the College Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(2), pages 225-281.
    3. Keane, Michael P. & Todd, Petra E. & Wolpin, Kenneth I., 2011. "The Structural Estimation of Behavioral Models: Discrete Choice Dynamic Programming Methods and Applications," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 4, pages 331-461, Elsevier.
    4. Dennis Epple & Richard Romano & Sinan Sarpça & Holger Sieg & Melanie Zaber, 2019. "Market power and price discrimination in the US market for higher education," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 50(1), pages 201-225, March.
    5. Epple, Dennis & Romano, Richard & Sarpça, Sinan & Sieg, Holger, 2017. "A general equilibrium analysis of state and private colleges and access to higher education in the U.S," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 164-178.
    6. Fu, Chao & Guo, Junjie & Smith, Adam J. & Sorensen, Alan, 2022. "Students’ heterogeneous preferences and the uneven spatial distribution of colleges," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 49-64.
    7. Lance Lochner & Alexander Monge-Naranjo, 2012. "Credit Constraints in Education," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 225-256, July.
    8. Nobuyoshi Kikuchi, 2017. "Marginal Returns to Schooling and Education Policy Change in Japan," ISER Discussion Paper 0996r, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, revised Oct 2017.
    9. Dennis Epple & Richard Romano & Sinan Sarpça & Holger Sieg, 2013. "The U.S. Market for Higher Education: A General Equilibrium Analysis of State and Private Colleges and Public Funding Policies," NBER Working Papers 19298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Mario Fiorini, 2012. "Fostering Educational Enrolment Through Subsidies: The Issue Of Timing," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(5), pages 741-772, August.
    11. Dur, Robert & Glazer, Amihai, 2008. "Subsidizing Enjoyable Education," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 1023-1039, October.
    12. Peter Arcidiacono & Michael Lovenheim, 2016. "Affirmative Action and the Quality-Fit Trade-Off," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(1), pages 3-51, March.
    13. Pedro Luis Silva, 2024. "Specialists or All-Rounders: How Best to Select University Students?," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(2), pages 227-271.
    14. Magali Beffy & Denis Fougère & Arnaud Maurel, 2012. "Choosing the Field of Study in Postsecondary Education: Do Expected Earnings Matter?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(1), pages 334-347, February.
    15. Keane, Michael P., 2010. "Structural vs. atheoretic approaches to econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 156(1), pages 3-20, May.
    16. Jonathan Smith, 2018. "The Sequential College Application Process," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 13(4), pages 545-575, Fall.
    17. Keane, Michael P. & Roemer, John E., 2009. "Assessing policies to equalize opportunity using an equilibrium model of educational and occupational choices," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 879-898, August.
    18. Emily E. Cook, 2021. "Competing Campuses: Equilibrium Prices, Admissions, and Undergraduate Programs in US Higher Education," Working Papers 2120, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    19. Elizabeth M. Caucutt & Lance Lochner & Youngmin Park, 2017. "Correlation, Consumption, Confusion, or Constraints: Why Do Poor Children Perform so Poorly?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 119(1), pages 102-147, January.
    20. Carvalho, José-Raimundo & Magnac, Thierry & Xiong, Qizhou, 2016. "College Choice and the Selection of Mechanisms: A Structural Empirical Analysis," IWH Discussion Papers 3/2016, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).

    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:hka:wpaper:2012-002. 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: Jennifer Pachon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mfichus.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.