Life Cycle Schooling and Dynamic Selection Bias: Models and Evidence for Five Cohorts / Stephen V. Cameron, James J. Heckman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cameron, Stephen V.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Heckman, James J.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w6385.

NBER working paper series no. w6385

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Life Cycle Schooling and Dynamic Selection Bias

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1998.

Summary:

This paper examines an empirical regularity found in many societies: that family influences on the probability of transiting from one grade level to the next diminish at higher levels of education. We examine the statistical model used to establish the empirical regularity and the intuitive behavioral interpretation often used to rationalize it. We show that the implicit economic model assumes myopia. The intuitive interpretive model is identified only by imposing arbitrary distributional assumptions onto the data. We produce an alternative choice-theoretic model with fewer parameters that rationalizes the same data and is not based on arbitrary distributional assumptions.

Notes:

Print version record

January 1998.