Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Early research on the returns to higher education treated the postsecondary system as a monolith. In reality, postsecondary education in the United States and around the world is highly differentiated, with a variety of options that differ by credential (associates degree, bachelor's degree, diploma, certificate, graduate degree), the control of the institution (public, private not-for-profit, private for-profit), the quality/resources of the institution, field of study, and exposure to remedial education. In this Chapter, we review the literature on the returns to these different types of higher education investments, which has received increasing attention in recent decades. We first provide an overview of the structure of higher education in the U.S. and around the world, followed by a model that helps clarify and articulate the assumptions employed by different estimators used in the literature. We then discuss the research on the return to institution type, focusing on the return to two-year, four-year, and for-profit institutions as well as the return to college quality within and across these institution types. We also present the research on the return to different educational programs, including vocational credentials, remedial education, field of study, and graduate school. The wide variation in the returns to different postsecondary investments that we document leads to the question of how students from different backgrounds sort into these different institutions and programs. We discuss the emerging research showing that lower-SES students, especially in the U.S., are more likely to sort into colleges and programs with lower returns as well as results from recent U.S.-based interventions and policies designed to support success among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Chapter concludes with some broad directions for future research.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. Because e-cigarettes do not involve the combustion of tobacco, vaping offers the potential to prevent most of the health consequences of smoking. We study the impact of an information shock created by an outbreak of lung injuries apparently related to e-cigarettes. We use data from multiple sources: surveys of risk perceptions conducted before, during, and after the outbreak; an in-depth survey we conducted on risk perceptions and vaping and smoking behavior; and national aggregate time-series sales data. We find that after the outbreak, consumer perceptions of the riskiness of e-cigarettes sharply increased, so that in contrast to almost all experts, the majority of consumers perceive e-cigarettes to be relatively and absolutely riskier than cigarettes. From our estimated e-cigarette demand models, we conclude that the information shock reduced e-cigarette demand by about 30 percent. We also estimate that the information shock decreased the use of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation, again by about 30 percent. Over time, the reduced smoking cessation due to the information shock will in turn increase smoking-related illness and death.