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Working Paper
Navigating Higher Education Insurance: An Experimental Study on Demand and Adverse Selection
We conduct a survey-based experiment with 2,776 students at a non-profit university to analyze income insurance demand in education financing. We offered students a hypothetical choice: either a federal loan with income-driven repayment or an income-share agreement (ISA), with randomized framingof downside protections. Emphasizing income insurance increased ISA uptake by 43%. We observe that students are responsive to changes in contract terms and possible student loan cancellation, which is evidence of preference adjustment or adverse selection. Our results indicate that framing specific ...
Working Paper
Predicting College Closures and Financial Distress
In this paper, we assemble the most comprehensive dataset to date on the characteristics of colleges and universities, including dates of operation, institutional setting, student body, staff, and finance data from 2002 to 2023. We provide an extensive description of what is known and unknown about closed colleges compared with institutions that did not close. Using this data, we first develop a series of predictive models of financial distress, utilizing factors like operational revenue/expense patterns, sources of revenue, metrics of liquidity and leverage, enrollment/staff patterns, and ...
Working Paper
Place-Based Labor Market Inequality
This paper presents an overview of how various labor market indicators differ across geography. While many indicators are often discussed in terms of national aggregates, such discussions obscure the large degree of variation that exists across localities. We primarily use counties as a geographic unit, and document both structural differences that persist over time as well as differences in the past two business cycles. The racial composition of communities plays a large role in explaining geographic differences in labor market indicators, in some cases even more so than income. We ...
Working Paper
Affording Degree Completion: An Experimental Study of Completion Grants at Accessible Public Universities
To improve college affordability and graduation rates, universities are increasingly allocating “completion grants” to students who are nearing the finish line but facing financial challenges. Using an experimental design and common program model across 11 broad-access public universities in ten states, we assessed the impact of a completion grants averaging $1,200 distributed among more than 14,000 students. We find that, despite university expectations that most students were near completion, only two-thirds of students eligible to receive a completion grant graduated within the ...