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Job Market Papers
Title: Multi-dimensional Human Skill Formation with Multi-dimensional Parental Investment
Abstract:
"Parental Investment" has been proposed as a key determinant of human skill. Accounting for its multidimensional
nature allows more nuanced understanding of the skill formation process. Human skill itself
is also multi-dimensional. This paper provides a consolidated framework to analyze a multi-dimensional
skill formation process with multi-dimensional parental investment. A dynamic factor model is
employed as the main workhorse and empirical results from Children of the National Longitudinal
Survey of Youth 1979 (C-NLSY79) are presented for various demographic groups. The results suggest
that different kinds of parental investment contribute to the formation of different types of skill at
different developmental stages. Implications for policy design and inter-generational transmission of
inequality also are discussed.
Title: The Rate of Return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program
Abstract:
This paper computes the rate of return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program,
an early intervention program targeted toward disadvantaged African-American youth. It
improves on previous estimates by (1) deriving standard errors for estimated rates of return; (2)
examining the sensitivity of estimates to alternative assumptions required to interpolate and
extrapolate data to determine missing earnings; (3) examining the sensitivity of estimates to
alternative assumptions about the social costs of crime; (4) utilizing local cost data when possible
to produce more empirically relevant estimates; and (5) accounting for deadweight costs of
taxation. The estimated overall rates of return range between 6.6-9.8 percent and are generally
statistically significantly different from zero. This paper also presents the benefit-to-cost ratios for
various discount rates and find substantial benefits in excess of costs.
