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Working Papers

●  Preferences and Choice Constraints in Marital Sorting: Evidence From Korea (Job Market Paper)

      [abstract]  [paper - as of Nov 26,2007]

●  The Effects of Education on Labor Reallocation and Economic Growth

      [abstract]

●  Program Evaluation with Multiple Outcomes (with Azeem Shaikh and Joanne Yoong) 

      [abstract]

●  Education and China’s Structural Transformation: A General Equilibrium Approach

   (with Benjamin Malin)   [abstract]

● The Effects of Temptation on the Optimal Provision of Education 

   (SIEPR Discussion Paper:05-003)  [abstract]

●  Preferences and Choice Constraints in Marital Sorting: Evidence From Korea (Job Market Paper)

[top]  [paper - as of Nov 26,2007]

Marital sorting along education, income and other salient dimensions is well-documented for many countries. Understanding the mechanisms behind such sorting is important because the degree of marital sorting may influence income inequality, intergenerational mobility, and household labor supply, as well as other economic outcomes. Marital sorting is often thought to arise from some combination of people's preferences and constraints on their choice sets. However, separating these two causes of marital sorting is difficult because typical data sets provide information on either a person's spouse or a person's dating partners, but not both. This paper circumvents this difficulty by using a novel data set from a major Korean matchmaking company which contains both types of information. The paper analyzes gender-specific marital preferences by estimating a marriage model. Using the estimated model, I find that constraints on people's choice sets may account for a substantial fraction of observed sorting along education and industry in the general population. The recent development of new search technologies, such as online dating services, alleviates these constraints and thus may reduce marital sorting along these dimensions. I also find evidence that changing individual-level income inequality has a very limited impact on marital sorting, implying that such changes are unlikely to be amplified at the household-level by endogenous marital sorting.

●  The Effects of Education on Labor Reallocation and Economic Growth

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 This paper quantifies the contribution of rising educational attainment to China's economic growth by examining its role in facilitating the reallocation of labor from the agricultural to the non-agricultural sector. After controlling for individuals’ endogenous choices of education and sector, I estimate that completing middle school increases the probability of working in the non-agricultural sector by 36 percent and that an individual can earn several times more income by switching from the agricultural to the non-agricultural sector. The magnitude of these estimates suggests that rising educational attainment can account for about 14 percent of the growth of China’s real GDP per worker from 1978 to 2003. Of this 14 percent, 11 percent can be attributed to labor reallocation between sectors and 3 percent to increased human capital in both sectors. Therefore, considering the enabling role of education in economic growth through its effects on labor reallocation suggests that education’s contribution to growth is significantly greater than previously estimated.

●  Program Evaluation with Multiple Outcomes

(with Azeem Shaikh and Joanne Yoong)

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This paper develops a new multiple hypothesis testing procedure based on permutation testing methods. Large-scale program evaluations that rely on individual tests of multiple outcomes related to a single treatment are particularly vulnerable to false positives, and may therefore overstate the effect of the program. Our procedure explicitly accounts for multiplicity as well as correlation at the level of primary sampling units. We implement and benchmark our procedure by reevaluating the effectiveness of a poverty reduction program in Mexico, PROGRESA. PROGRESA aims to improve the livelihoods of poor rural residents in Mexico in three dimensions - education, health and nutrition – with a single randomized intervention, the allocation of conditional cash transfers.  Existing work on PROGRESA has found significant (and sometimes puzzling) positive effects on various outcomes when evaluating each of these three components separately. Our work reviews these results and demonstrates that when multiplicity is accounted for, various results from the previous literature no longer hold.

●  Education and China’s Structural Transformation: A General Equilibrium Approach

(with Benjamin Malin)

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We study the role of education in facilitating China’s rapid growth and structural transformation since 1978.  Using Chinese micro data, we quantify the impact of educational attainment on individual sectoral choice and income.  In order to analyze the aggregate implications of increased education, we then build and calibrate a general equilibrium model and run counterfactual exercises to account for the impact of decreased educational costs on Chinese economic performance.

● The Effects of Temptation on the Optimal Provision of Education  (SIEPR Discussion Paper:05-003)

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This paper provides a framework for analyzing optimal government transfers of education when individuals are tempted to underinvest in education. I show that government intervention is needed if there is no deadweight loss associated with taxation. If there is a loss from taxation, government intervention is needed only if the level of temptation is sufficiently high. The government may devise a transfer using a combination of free compulsory education, vouchers and price subsidies. For high levels of temptation, free compulsory education or vouchers are optimal, whereas price subsidies may be optimal for intermediate levels of temptation.