Seminars & Events
APL (Ajiken Power Lunch)
Assortative Matching and Complementarity in College Markets
APL (Ajiken Power Lunch) is a lunchtime workshop open to public, including IDE staffs, visiting research fellows, IDEAS students, outside researchers and graduate students. This workshop provides a platform for presentation of any work in progress where we can discuss in either English or Japanese.
Those who would attend a seminar are asked to announce yourself to receptionists on your arrival at the IDE and to obtain APL Organizers' signature on your admission card after the seminar.
Date&time:
August 3, 2017. (Thursday) 14:30-16:00
Venue:
Theme:
Assortative Matching and Complementarity in College Markets
Abstract
This paper examines one type of assortative matching in college markets: students with high socioeconomic status (SES) are more likely to attend high quality colleges. Assortativity matters if SES and college quality are complementary educational inputs. I develop an econometric framework that provides tests for the existence and sign of this complementarity. I implement these tests by exploiting a 2000 reform of the national college admission exam in Colombia, which caused a market-wide reduction in assortative matching in some regions of the country. I find that the reform lowered average graduation rates and post-college earnings in affected regions, consistent with a positive complementarity between SES and college quality. I also find evidence of mismatch: part of these negative effects came from the low SES students who were shifted into higher quality colleges. However, both the market-wide and mismatch effects die out several cohorts after the exam reform, which suggests that complementarity may evolve with large-scale changes in assortativity.
Speaker:
Evan Riehl
(Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Cornell University)
Chair:
Languages:
English
Institute of Developing Economies, APL Organizers
E-mail: APLE-mail