Estimating Marginal Returns to Education

By Pedro Carneiro, James J. Heckman, E. Vytlacil. The American Economic Review, 2010

646 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper estimates marginal returns to college for individuals induced to enroll in college by different marginal policy changes. The recent instrumental variables literature seeks to estimate this parameter, but in general it does so only under strong assumptions that are tested and found wanting. We show how to utilize economic theory and local instrumental variables estimators to estimate the effect of marginal policy changes. Our empirical analysis shows that returns are higher for individuals with values of unobservables that make them more likely to attend college. We contrast our estimates with IV estimates of the return to schooling.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d38cdeb33ba44d9ef2f8798bfeb90b3b5703ef2e

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Citations in the corpus

Educational Assortative Mating and Household Income Inequality (2019, background): “For example, Carneiro, Heckman, and Vytlacil (2011) estimate that returns to college differ across individuals in magnitude and even sign, and that people select into education based in part on their idiosyncratic returns. number of pairs (of couples).10 As a result, the Kendall correlation ranges…”
Using Instrumental Variables for Inference About Policy Relevant Treatment Effects (2018, neutral): “Carneiro et al. (2011) and Maestas, Mullen, and Strand (2013).”
Trends in Quality-Adjusted Skill Premia in the United States, 1960-2000 (2009, methodology): “If we regress log hourly wages in 1994 on within We use schooling corrected AFQT in the NLSY79, as in Carneiro et al. (2009).”
Who Benefits from Universal Child Care? Estimating Marginal Returns to Early Child Care Attendance (2018, neutral): “Other studies, such as Aakvik et al. (2005) and Carneiro et al. (2011, 2017), instead invoke independence of (X, R, T ) and Uj, in which case ð bj a t Þ0 and Uj are defined as structural or causal.”
The Medium-Term Labor Market Returns to Community College Awards: Evidence From North Carolina (2014, background): “The consensus is that at least some of these biases do not significantly distort the results obtained from a simple earnings function (see, e.g., Carneiro et al., 2011).”
The Economics of Human Development and Social Mobility (2014, neutral): “Empirical evidence by Carneiro et al. (2011) and Eisenhauer et al. (2013) using NSLY79 data suggests that for low ability individuals the returns to college enrollment are close to 0 if not negative.”