Data and Code for: College Quality and Attendance Patterns: A Long-Run View

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Lutz Hendricks, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Christopher Herrington, Virginia Commonwealth University; Todd Schoellman, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
HHS AEJMacro replication files.zip application/zip 3.1 GB 02/13/2020 10:06:AM
README.pdf application/pdf 99 KB 01/16/2020 03:28:AM

Project Citation: 

Hendricks, Lutz, Herrington, Christopher, and Schoellman, Todd. Data and Code for: College Quality and Attendance Patterns: A Long-Run View. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2020. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-12-18. https://doi.org/10.3886/E115791V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary Abstract: 
We construct a time series of college attendance patterns for the United States and document a reversal: family background was a better predictor of college attendance before World War II, but academic ability was afterwards. We construct a model of college choice that explains this reversal. The model’s central mechanism is that an exogenous surge of college attendance leads better colleges to be oversubscribed, institute selective admissions, and raise their quality relative to their peers, as in Hoxby (2009). Rising quality at better colleges attracts high-ability students, while falling quality at the remaining colleges dissuades low-ability students, generating the reversal.

Scope of Project

JEL Classification:  View help for JEL Classification
      I20 Education and Research Institutions: General
      O11 Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage United States
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 1919 – 1979


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V1 [2020-12-18]

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