labor market returns to two and four year college the paper examines labor market returns to a two and four year college education analysis of the 1972 national longitudinal survey of youth observation that the average person who attended a two year college earned about 10 percent more than those without any college education comparison with the wages of those who attended a four year college education

affirmative action in higher education how do admission and financial aid rules affect future earnings this paper addresses how changing the admission and financial aid rules at colleges affects future earnings i estimate a structural model of the following decisions by individuals where to submit applications which school to attend and what field to study the model also includes decisions by schools as to which students to accept and how much financial aid to offer simulating how black educational choices would change were they to face the white admission and aid rules shows that race based advantages had little effect on earnings however removing race based advantages does affect black educational outcomes in particular removing advantages in admissions substantially decreases the number of black students at top tier schools while removing advantages in financial aid causes a decrease in the number of blacks who attend college

over identification tests in earnings functions with fixed effects the fixed effects model for panel data imposes restrictions on coefficients from regressions of all leads and lags of the dependent variable on all leads and lags of right side variables in the standard fixed effects model the omnibus goodness of fit statistic is shown to simplify to the degrees of freedom times the rz from a regression of analysis of covariance residuals on all leads and lags of right side variables this result is applied to test models for the union wage effect using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy identification and estimation of the return to schooling in models with fixed effects is also discussed although schooling is often treated as time invariant schooling increases over a five year period for nearly 20 of continuously employed men in the nlsy the analysis of covariance estimate of the returns to schooling is precisely estimated and roughly twice as large as the ordinary least squares estimate unlike in the union wage effects equation however

conjectural variation elasticities and concentration abstract this paper shows that measures of seller concentration can be interpreted as weighted averages of conjectural variation elasticities this interpretation allows an assessment of the appropriateness of a wide variety of concentration measures for price cost margin studies

the effect of ethics on labor market success evidence from mbas abstract this paper empirically investigates the link between ethics earnings and gender using a self reported measure from a longitudinal survey of registrants for the graduate management admission test we find that ethical character is negatively associated with males wages for females however this relationship does not hold in addition using measures of the degree to which ethics is emphasized in business school curricula as an indicator for enhancement of individual ethical standards of graduates we investigate variation in the returns to an mba degree we find that the larger the degree to which males report that business education enhanced their ethical character the lower their wages holding other aspects of their education constant for females however enhanced ethics through business school is positively and significantly associated with returns to the mba degree more objective measures of ethics emphasis in business school curricula provide further support of these findings

growth rate heterogeneity and the covariance structure of life cycle earnings using u s panel data on adult males i compare the profile heterogeneity model of earnings dynamics in which the earnings experience profile varies across individuals to a competing model in which earnings has a unit root the latter specification enjoys increasing popularity among researchers my analysis questions this favor suggesting the profile heterogeneity model provides a more consistent representation of the data i also provide new estimates of the variation in earnings growth rates previous evidence is from relatively unrepresentative samples individuals one standard deviation above the mean enjoy a 20 30 earnings advantage in just 10 years

heterogeneous human capital occupational choice and male female earnings differences human capital models have mainly focused on the rate of return to investment in a homogeneous stock of capital yet individuals have different initial attributes that determine comparative advantage in producing different types of human capital we find that mathematical ability is an important determinant of field choice for college students and that differences in earnings across fields are largely explained as a return to the use of scarce quantitative abilities in the production of each type of human capital the model successfully accounts for the observed male female differences in earnings and occupational choices of recent college graduates

bank level estimates of market power abstract the aim of this study is to provide an empirical methodology for the estimation of market power of individual banks the new method employs the well known model of panzar and rosse 1987 and proposes its estimation using the local regression technique local regression yields coefficient estimates equal to the number of observations and thus market power is estimated for each bank at each point in time in addition a number of restrictive assumptions regarding the properties of the production function of banks are relaxed a panel of banks from transition countries that has been recently employed by delis 2010 to obtain market power estimates using the panzar and rosse model at the country level is used for comparative purposes we find that country averages of the bank level results exhibit a very close relationship with standard industry level panzar rosse estimates however the empirical results suggest that many banks in countries with fairly competitive banking systems deviate significantly from the country averages and that market power varies substantially across banks in each country

eliminating race differences in school attainment and labor market success in this article we provide quantitative evidence on the effects of monetary incentive schemes designed to reduce racial differences in school attainment and earnings our analysis is based on the structural estimation of a dynamic model of schooling work and occupational choice decisions over the life cycle we consider two recent proposals that although not specifically targeted to blacks can be expected to have differential racial impacts one proposal suggested by robert reich provides a high school graduation bonus to youths from lower income families the other suggested by edmund phelps provides wage subsidies to low wage workers

the pre programme earnings dip and the determinants of participation in a social programme implications for simple programme evaluation strategies the key to estimating the impact of a programme is constructing the counterfactual outcome representing what would have happened in its absence this problem becomes more complicated when agents such as individuals firms or local governments self select into the programme rather than being exogenously assigned to it this paper uses data from a major social experiment to identify what would have happened to the earnings of self selected participants in a job training programme had they not participated in it we investigate the implications of these earnings patterns for the validity of widely used before after and difference in differences estimators

a human capital model of the effects of ability and family background on optimal schooling levels this paper develops a theoretical model of optimal schooling levels where ability and family background are the central explanatory variables we derive schooling demand and supply functions based on individual wealth maximization using nlsy79 data we stratify our sample into one year fte work experience cohorts for 1985 1989 mincer s 1974 overtaking cohort the years of work experience at which individuals observed earnings approximately equal what they would have been based on schooling and ability alone corresponds to 13 fte years of work experience yielding on average a rate of return of 9 6 percent and an average optimal 11 4 years of schooling

dividing the costs and returns to general training data from the national longitudinal survey of youth indicate that the employer often pays the explicit costs of not only on site training but also off site general training although few of these costs appear to be passed on to workers in the form of a lower wage while in training completed spells of general training paid for by previous employers have a larger wage effect than completed spells of general training paid for by the current employer a model where contract enforcement considerations cause employers to share the costs and returns to purely general training can explain these findings

comparative forecasting performance of symmetric and asymmetric conditional volatility models of an exchange rate abstract the relative out of sample forecasting quality of symmetric and asymmetric conditional volatility models of an exchange rate differs according to the symmetric and asymmetric evaluation criteria both symmetric and asymmetric forecast competitors of currency volatility are biased and systematically over predict volatility

is schooling mostly in the genes nature nurture decomposition using data on relatives we modify r a fisher s model by incorporating measures of the environment that may be correlated across kin groups we estimate a model of schooling attainment using data on eight kin groups and find a large contribution of genetic endowments to the variance in schooling though certain aspects of the environment matter

competition conduct and demand elasticity abstract this paper demonstrates the relationship between the rosse panzar test for competitive conduct and the firm s elasticity of demand and develops a method of increasing the test s discriminating power

does it pay to attend an elite private college cross cohort evidence on the effects of college type on earnings although a substantial and rising labor market premium is associated with college attendance in general little is known about how this premium varies across institutions of different types and across time in this paper we explicitly model high school students choice of college type characterized by selectivity and control based on individual and family characteristics including ability and parental economic status and an estimate of the net costs of attendance we estimate selectivity corrected outcome equations using data from both the national longitudinal study of the high school class of 1972 and high school and beyond which permit us to determine the effects of college quality on wages and earnings and how this effect varies across time even after controlling for selection effects strong evidence emerges of a significant economic return to attending an elite private institution and some evidence suggests this premium has increased over time

estimates of the economic returns to schooling from a new sample of twins this paper uses a new survey to contrast the wages of genetically identical twins with different schooling levels multiple measurements of schooling levels were also collected to assess the effect of reporting error on the estimated economic returns to schooling the data indicate that omitted ability variables do not bias the estimated return to schooling upward but that measurement error does bias it downward adjustment for measurement error indicates that an additional year of schooling increases wages by 12 to 16 percent a higher estimate of the economic returns to schooling than has been previously found copyright 1994 by american economic association

investment and market power abstract this paper argues that the degree of market power within an industry is an important determinant of interindustry differences in investment behavior a neoclassical investment model is analyzed to show that market power is positively associated with capital stock flexibility the intuition for the result is that firms adjust their stocks and investment plans quickly in response to new conditions so as to capture the rents asssociated with their market power

community college enrollment college major and the gender wage gap the literature on the narrowing of the gender wage gap during the 1980s considers among other factors the closing of the male female differential in post secondary education this paper looks specifically at the role played by the dramatic relative increase in women s enrollment in two year colleges with independent cross sections developed using nlsy data the authors find that the gender wage gap narrowed by 0 0469 log points between 1985 and 1990 and by 0 0932 log points between 1989 and 1994 the more pronounced decrease observed for 1989 94 is largely explained by erosion of male female differences in weeks worked job tenure and full time employment a more novel finding is evidence that while change in the quantity of education provides essentially no explanatory power disaggregating education by two year and four year providers and by major field of study accounts for 8 5 11 of the closing of the wage gap over the 1989 94 period

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

income schooling and ability evidence from a new sample of identical twins we develop a model of optimal schooling investments and estimate it using new data on approximately 700 identical twins we estimate an average return to schooling of 9 percent for identical twins but estimated returns appear to be slightly higher for less able individuals simple cross section estimates are marginally upward biased these empirical results imply that abler individuals attain more schooling because they face lower marginal costs of schooling not because of higher marginal benefits

the gender pay gap beyond human capital heterogeneity in noncognitive skills and in labor market tastes abstract focused on human capital economists typically explain about half of the gender earnings gap for a national sample of mbas we account for 82 percent of the gap by incorporating noncognitive skills for example confidence and assertiveness and preferences regarding family career and jobs those two sources of gender heterogeneity account for a quarter of the explained pay gap with half due to human capital variables and the other quarter due to hours worked and current job characteristics female mbas appear to pay a penalty for good citizen behavior choosing jobs that contribute to society and characteristics higher ethical standards

comment on what drives bank competition some international evidence the question of bank competition is vitally important for a number of reasons the essential role of bank credit and other financial services as an input in the production of most other goods and services places banks in a unique and influential position such that any allocative inefficiency or other market distortions in banking are almost certain to be felt throughout the economy moreover recent history has provided numerous instances where the textbook paradigm of atomistic competition has proven inadequate as a policy guide for efficient banking either because there are simply too few banks to rely on sheer numbers as a guarantee of vigorous competition as in canada or because of evidence that there can be such a thing as too much competition in banking as suggested by several studies or because of instances where nearly competitive pricing has been observed in markets containing only one or two banks or because conversely substantially noncompetitive pricing has sometimes been deduced in banking products such as credit cardswith thousands of suppliers thus the study of bank competition remains an urgent field of research claessens and laeven 2004 this issue of jmcb make two key contributions here first they extend a proven empirical method to an unprecedentedly large and varied crosscountry sample second they offer the logical and policy relevant additional step of seeking to identify factors associated with variations in measured conduct this step is needed to assess the empirical validity of the traditional structure conductperformance paradigm in their sample and is especially important where that paradigm is found lacking as a predictor of bank conduct indeed although the authors

the implicit taxes from college financial aid abstract families who earn more or who heed the experts advice and save for college typically receive less financial aid the financial aid system therefore implicitly taxes both income and assets we use npsas aid award data to estimate these implicit taxes and find that at average priced colleges the marginal income tax ranges from 2 to 16 and the marginal asset levy from 8 to 26 a typical family loses aid worth about 11 000 at average priced colleges and 15 000 at expensive colleges by accumulating an extra 50 000 in assets

reputation and efficiency a non parametric assessment of america s top rated mba programs abstract widely publicized reports of fresh mbas getting multiple job offers with six figure annual salaries leave a long lasting general impression about the high quality of selected business schools while such spectacular achievement in job placement rightly deserves recognition one should not lose sight of the resources expended in order to accomplish this result in this study we employ a measure of pareto koopmans global efficiency to evaluate the efficiency levels of the mba programs in business week s top rated list we compute input and output oriented radial and non radial efficiency measures for comparison among three tier groups the schools from a higher tier group on average are more efficient than those from lower tiers although variations in efficiency levels do occur within the same tier which exist over different measures of efficiency

semiparametric bayesian inference for dynamic tobit panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity summary this paper develops semiparametric bayesian methods for inference of dynamic tobit panel data models our approach requires that the conditional mean dependence of the unobserved heterogeneity on the initial conditions and the strictly exogenous variables be specified important quantities of economic interest such as the average partial effect and average transition probabilities can be readily obtained as a by product of the markov chain monte carlo run we apply our method to study female labor supply using a panel data set from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

are the garch models best in out of sample performance abstract out of sample performance of exchange rate volatility model depends on criteria used to measure it the linear garch models cannot generally outperform the nonlinear models in the rmse criterion furthermore the nonparametric kernel model is best in the mae criterion

assessing competition with the panzar rosse model the role of scale costs and equilibrium the panzar rosse test has been widely applied to assess competitive conduct often in specifications controlling for firm scale or using a price equation we show that neither a price equation nor a scaled revenue function yields a valid measure for competitive conduct moreover even an unscaled revenue function generally requires additional information about costs and market equilibrium to infer the degree of competition our theoretical findings are confirmed by an empirical analysis of competition in banking using a sample containing more than 100 000 bank year observations on more than 17 000 banks in 63 countries during the years 1994 2004

modeling heteroscedasticity in daily foreign exchange rates this article estimates autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic arch and generalized arch garch models for five foreign currencies using 10 years of daily data a variety of arch and garch specifications a number of nonnormal error densities and a comprehensive set of diagnostic checks it finds that arch and garch models can usually remove all heteroscedasticity in price changes in all five currencies goodness of fit diagnostics indicate that exponential garch with certain nonnormal distributions fits the canadian dollar extremely well and the swiss franc and the deutsche mark reasonably well only one nonnormal distribution fits the japanese yen reasonably well none fit the british pound

consistent conjectures in a value maximizing duopoly recent literature on consistent conjectures has established that under a variety of conditions only competitive behavior is rational rationality or consistency is defined in this literature as the condition that the slope of a firm s profit maximizing reaction function must equal the conjecture made about the firm s reactions by its rivals this concept of consistency is due to bresnahan 5 who uses it to select among the many possible conjectural equilibria in duopoly as defined by bowley 3 perry 24 extends the duopoly analysis to the case of an arbitrary fixed number of identical firms as well as to the case of free entry and exit both papers show that only the bertrand conjecture in which firms accommodate rivals output changes by making equal and opposite changes is consistent when marginal costs are constant in addition perry shows that this result also holds when entry and exit are free the bertrand conjecture is identified with competitive behavior since it implies price taking and marginal cost pricing the equivalence that both papers establish between consistent conjecture equilibrium cce and competitive equilibrium under constant marginal cost may have important practical implications johnston summarizes his thorough survey of cost functions with the comment two major impressions however stand out clearly the first is that the various short run studies more often than not indicate constant marginal cost and declining average cost as the pattern that best seems to describe the data that have been analyzed 15 168 therefore the results of bresnahan and perry would seem to apply to a wide range of observed behavior making a strong theoretical case that much economic activity is truly competitive regardless of the number of firms 2 even when marginal costs are not constant and the number of firms is fixed the implication of the consistent conjectures hypothesis for profit maximizing firms is that behavior is more competitive than coumot this result in itself is important since recent work has indicated that cournot equilibrium approaches the competitive limit in the case of large economies see for

measuring multi product banks market power using the lerner index abstract the aggregate lerner index is a popular composite measure of multi product banks market power based on total assets as the single aggregate output factor we show that the aggregate lerner index only qualifies as a consistently aggregated lerner index if three conditions hold under these conditions the aggregate lerner index reduces to a weighted average of the product specific lerner indices we test the three conditions for a sample of u s banks covering the years 2011 2017 all three conditions are rejected and we show that they may cause an economically relevant bias to the aggregate lerner index depending on the economic context as a general solution we propose using the always consistently aggregated weighted average lerner index whenever a composite lerner index is needed

the economic returns to an mba because mba programs require work experience before admittance prior wages can be exploited to disentangle the return to the degree from unobserved productivity we find that controlling for individual fixed effects generally reduces the estimated returns to an mba particularly for those in top programs however for full time mba students attending schools outside of the top 25 the estimated returns are higher when we control for individual fixed effects we show that there is some evidence that those who take the gmat but do not obtain an mba are stronger in dimensions such as workplace skills that are not easily measured

assessing competition in canada s financial system a note in a recent article in this journal alli nathan and edwin neave 1989 hereafter nn presented an empirical assessment of the state of competition in several sectors of the canadian financial services industry namely banking trust and mortgage firms this assessment was carried out by estimating the panzar rossel pr statistic 1987 using cross sectional data for 1982 1983 and 1984 on the basis of the value of this statistic the authors conclude that banks usually appear to exhibit more competitive behaviour than the other two sectors but that the data rejects the hypothesis of monopolistic or oligopolistic behaviour in any of the three industries examined this note argues that none of these conclusions is supported by the nn results and that the pr statistic is generally inadequate for competitive assessment purposes in an oligopoly at any rate the statistical form of the test is not consistent with the use made of its results in what follows we present a brief discussion of the nn results in connection with the pr statistic since this statistic is not well known we also include a brief exposition of its properties

testing for switching market conduct this paper tests for switching market conduct in an oligopsonistic industry the model adopts bresnahan s procedure for identifying the oligopoly solution and integrates the procedure with a switching regression model applied to the us beef slaughter industry two distinct regimes of conduct in the industry were identified the two regimes are consistent with the time periods during which the industry has undergone major structural change

college choice and wages estimates using data on female twins the authors assess the impact of college quality on women s earnings and the influence of family and individual endowments on college choice using new data from a survey of identical and nonidentical twins born in minnesota the estimates reject models that ignore school choice the statistically preferred estimates suggest that ph d granting private universities with well paid senior faculty and smaller enrollments produce students who have significantly higher earnings later in life both the quantity of schooling and the quality of schooling resources are allocated to higher endowed individuals which exacerbates preexisting inequality in human capital and biases conventional estimates of school quality effects copyright 1996 by mit press

endowments and the allocation of schooling in the family and in the marriage market the twins experiment 03 we show how comparisons between the within twin correlations of human capital outcomes across identical and nonidentical twins can be used to identify the variability in the individual specific component of endowments and the responsiveness of schooling to individual specific endowments in the family and in the marriage market even when schooling is measured with error estimates from two twins samples indicate that 27 42 percent of the variance in log earnings obesity is due to variability in individual specific endowments allocations of schooling reinforce specific endowments and individual specific earnings endowments of men and their wives schooling are negatively associated

non structural measures of competition toward a synthesis of alternatives abstract procedures for detecting or measuring market power have been suggested in recent years by iwata rosse and panzar and bresnahan this paper integrates elements from all three approaches to provide a single more unified alternative to the structure conduct performance paradigm

does the river spill over estimating the economic returns to attending a racially diverse college t he attainment of a diverse student body is a constitutionally permissible goal for an institution of higher education the atmosphere of speculation experiment and creation so essential to the quality of higher education is widely believed to be promoted by a diverse student body lewis powell regents of the university of california v bakke 438 u s 265 1978 pp 311 12 quoting sweezy v new hampshire 354 u s 234 1957 p 263 i introduction for more than a quarter century the belief that diversity contributes to the quality of undergraduate and graduate education has motivated court opinions and college policies regarding racial preferences in admissions l surprisingly the social sciences have provided very little evidence to support or refute this claim such evidence would clearly be of great interest both to policy makers and to scholars conducting more general studies of the impacts of affirmative action on higher education 2 in the absence of programs employing random assignment of individuals to campuses with varying degrees of racial diversity any evidence offered on this question will be subject to criticism that diversity may correlate with unobserved determinants of individual outcomes 3 in such a scenario policy makers face an unenviable choice of making uninformed decisions or paying attention to potentially imperfect research findings this article does not claim to solve all the issues involved in the identification of racial diversity effects as described below however we use a promising data source the college and beyond c b data set and a variety of identification strategies to gain some degree of insight into the question of whether exposure to diversity is beneficial for college students we find no evidence of a positive link between the two variables and the imperfections of our research design most likely lead us to overstate the likelihood that there is such a link we begin by translating powell s hypothesis into economic terms building on the existing concepts of human capital becker 1964 and ethnic capital borjas 1992 1995 and inspired by lazear s 1995 model of cultural assimilation we introduce the concept of diversity capital we define diversity capital as a measure of an individual s ability to create surplus in interactions with individuals of different racial ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds in this context the beliefs articulated by lewis powell in 1978 translate into a hypothesis that a diverse student body contributes directly or indirectly to diversity capital with this proposed causal mechanism in mind we focus our empirical analysis on a direct estimation of the relationship between minority representation and the postgraduation outcomes of undergraduates on elite campuses although our model of the returns to collegiate diversity is simple empirical estimation of the returns to diversity is complicated by an omitted variable problem college racial composition may correlate with unobserved institution level components of education quality or with individual level determinants of productivity in our sample of selective colleges the sign of this bias is most likely positive among selective colleges those matriculating the students with the highest sat scores also tend to have higher minority representation if student sat scores are imperfectly but positively correlated with unobserved determinants of productivity our estimates will exhibit a positive bias and thus overstate the case that exposure to underrepresented minorities urms improves postgraduate outcomes 4 in one set of specifications we allow the effect of exposure to diversity to vary with the relative position of individual students and peers in the sat score distribution in general we find that the type of diversity increase brought about by affirmative action policies which brings lower scoring minority students into potential contact with higher scoring majority race students is if anything detrimental to majority race students

assessing competition in the banking industry a multi product approach abstract this paper investigates the competitive aspects of multi product banking operations extending panzar and rosse s 1987 model to the case of a multi product banking firm we show that higher economies of scope in multi product banking are associated with lower panzar rosse measures of competition in the banking sector to test this empirical implication and determine the impact of multi production on market power we use a new dataset on the brazilian banking industry consistent with our theoretical prediction we find that banks that offer classic banking products i e loans and credit cards and other banking products i e brokerage services insurance and capitalization bonds have substantially higher market power than banks that offer only classic products these results suggest a positive bias in the traditional estimates of competition in which multi output actions are not considered

the contribution of associate s degree holders to u s earnings labor quality productivity and overall economic growth there is substantial evidence on the importance of education as a driver of earnings productivity and economic growth however knowledge of the specific role of associate s degrees in u s economic growth is limited we analyze the sources of u s economic growth and identify the contribution of associate s degree holders to improvements in earnings labor quality productivity and overall economic growth we find evidence that substitution toward workers with associate s degrees has increased u s earnings aggregate labor quality and productivity and that these effects are concentrated in the health care trade and government sectors while the average educational attainment of people entering the labor force has plateaued our results suggest that shifting workers from some college to associate degrees could improve earnings the quality of the workforce productivity and growth potentially without more time spent in school

firm size and the incentive to differentiate abstract the conjectural variation is treated as a choice variable capturing the behavioral impact of product differentiation by this means it is shown that firms have a profit incentive to differentiate large firms more than small ones and a differentiating firm more than its rivals

returns to field of study versus school quality mba selection on observed and unobserved heterogeneity i introduction given the importance of human capital investment prospective college students and parents must often choose between higher quality and cost and lower quality and cost schools the considerable literature that has examined this trade off identifies not only school quality as a principal driver of postbaccalaureate earnings but also students choice over fields of study 1 despite the attention lavished on school rankings james et al 1989 for example conclude that college experience variables especially major explain more of the variance in earnings than measured family background ability and college characteristics combined 252 2 that is a prospective baccalaureate student can expect strong future earnings not only by attending a highly ranked institution but also by majoring in a highly rewarded field such as engineering the sciences or business at a lesser ranked school surprisingly this important conclusion about the trade off between content and quality has not been generalized to any other postsecondary degree programs such as associate degrees at community colleges or master s of education master s of business administration mba law medical or phd programs the goal of this article is to fill this void in the literature by estimating the returns to both program quality and fields of specialization in the context of graduate education specifically we estimate these returns for the third most commonly earned postsecondary degree the mba morgeson and nahrgang 2008 prior research has estimated a large drop off in returns to an mba beyond the nation s elite programs arcidiacono et al 2008 because of this and because mbas are likely to face significant opportunity costs of moving to attend a more highly ranked program than what may be available locally estimating the tradeoffs between returns to program quality and to fields of specialization is especially important for mbas in the data set used in this study the average mba student had about 6 yr of full time work experience half were married and 27 had children however if family and job ties restrict potential mba students from enrolling in more highly ranked programs might they nonetheless be able to earn high wage premiums by specializing their studies in fields with higher returns our study focuses on mba areas of concentration in response to competitive pressures and consumer demand many business schools have offered the opportunity for students to go beyond the core mba curriculum by tailoring additional coursework toward a particular area 3 in this way mba concentrations mirror the role of undergraduate majors unfortunately to our knowledge no entity such as the association of advance collegiate schools or business aacsb or the graduate management admissions council gmac systematically collects information about the specific courses that constitute areas of concentration by mba program the structure and actual courses included in concentrations within mba programs vary from school to school akin to differences among undergraduate business programs 4 however mba concentrations typically consist of four to five topical courses but range as high as seven or more according to dierdorff and rubin s 2008 survey of 576 of the 621 programs in the united states accredited by the aacsb 5 perhaps the main distinction between undergraduate and mba fields of study is that while most u s undergraduate business programs offer the full array of standard business fields that is general management finance accounting marketing management information systems mis and international business mba areas of concentration despite their increasing prevalence are more selectively offered by schools furthermore the presence of areas of concentration does not appear to be correlated with overall school quality suggesting that the quality of program attended and the choice of focus of study may be two independent drivers of increased earnings among graduates

the demand for and return to education when education outcomes are uncertain this article treats education as a sequential choice that is made under uncertainty a simple model is used to explore the effects of ability high school preparation preferences for schooling the borrowing rate and ex post payoffs to college on the probability of various post secondary college outcomes and the ex ante return to starting college the model motivates an empirical method of accounting for uncertainty about educational outcomes and for nonlinearity in the relationship between years of education and earnings when estimating the expected return to the first year of college

the varied economic returns to postsecondary education new evidence from the class of 1972 this paper estimates the returns to postsecondary education using the national longitudinal survey of the class of 1972 with earnings measured at about age 32 the results are based on transcripts rather than self reports about the amount of education allowing postsecondary education to be more precisely described than usual the results confirm the well known returns to b a degrees other credentials associate degrees and certificates for women also lead to higher earnings and wage rates though indirectly these credentials gain individuals access to jobs where they accumulate more experience and on the job training but provide no further advantage once experience and ojt are controlled most individuals who enroll in postsecondary education but fail to complete credentials have no higher earnings than high school graduates the effects of experience high school achievement and family background are familiar the results indicate a fundamental difference between labor markets for college graduates and the sub baccalaureate labor market

post secondary fees and the decision to attend a university or a community college abstract this paper examines the effect that post secondary fees have on a potential student s decision to start his or her college education at a university or a community college a theoretical model demonstrates that the student s decision follows a natural ordering that depends on his or her probability of graduation based on this natural ordering ordered probit is used to estimate the effect of interstate variation in fees on student attendance the results indicate that the own price effects of fee increases are negative while the cross price effects are positive

college selectivity and earnings this article shows that college performance and selectivity have significant effects on earnings it suggests that work that does not include college performance overstates the effect of college se