Liquidity Affects Job Choice: Evidence from Teach for America
Lucas Coffman,
John J Conlon,
Clayton Featherstone and
Judd B Kessler
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2019, vol. 134, issue 4, 2203-2236
Abstract:
Can access to a few hundred dollars of liquidity affect the career choice of a recent college graduate? In a three-year field experiment with Teach For America (TFA), a prestigious teacher placement program, we randomly increase the financial packages offered to nearly 7,300 potential teachers who requested support for the transition into teaching. The first two years of the experiment reveal that although most applicants do not respond to a marginal $600 of grants or loans, those in the worst financial position respond by joining TFA at higher rates. We continue the experiment into the third year and self-replicate our results. For the highest-need applicants, an extra $600 in loans, $600 in grants, and $1,200 in grants increase the likelihood of joining TFA by 12.2, 11.4, and 17.1 percentage points (or 20.0%, 18.7%, and 28.1%), respectively. Additional grant and loan dollars are equally effective, suggesting a liquidity mechanism. A follow-up survey bolsters the liquidity story and also shows that those drawn into teaching would have otherwise worked in private-sector firms.
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjz018 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:134:y:2019:i:4:p:2203-2236.
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals
Access Statistics for this article
The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva
More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().