Search Results

Title: Estimating Distributions of Treatment Effects with an Application to the Returns to Schooling and Measurement of the Effects of Uncertainty on College Choice
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Carneiro, Pedro M.
Heckman, James J.
Hansen, Karsten T.
Estimating Distributions of Treatment Effects with an Application to the Returns to Schooling and Measurement of the Effects of Uncertainty on College Choice
IZA Discussion Paper No. 767, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), April 2003
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Keyword(s): Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); College Enrollment; Colleges; Educational Returns; LISREL; Modeling; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Also: NBER Working Paper No. 9546, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2003. http://nber.nber.org/papers/w9546

This paper uses factor models to identify and estimate distributions of counterfactuals. We extend LISREL frameworks to a dynamic treatment effect setting, extending matching to account for unobserved conditioning variables. Using these models, we can identify all pairwise and joint treatment effects. We apply these methods to a model of schooling and determine the intrinsic uncertainty facing agents at the time they make their decisions about enrollment in school. Reducing uncertainty in returns raises college enrollment. We go beyond the "Veil of Ignorance" in evaluating educational policies and determine who benefits and who loses from commonly proposed educational reforms. We consider the information on these individuals from age 19 to age 35. For our analysis, we use the random sample of the NLSY and restrict the sample to 1161 white males for whom we have information on schooling, several parental background variables, test scores and behavior.

Bibliography Citation
Carneiro, Pedro M., James J. Heckman and Karsten T. Hansen. "Estimating Distributions of Treatment Effects with an Application to the Returns to Schooling and Measurement of the Effects of Uncertainty on College Choice." IZA Discussion Paper No. 767, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), April 2003.