The Effects of Earnings Disclosure on College Enrollment Decisions

Justine Hastings, Christopher Neilson and Seth Zimmerman

Working Papers from Princeton University. Economics Department.

Abstract: We use a large-scale survey and field experiment to evaluate a policy that provided information about college- and major-specific earnings and cost outcomes to college applicants in Chile. The intervention was administered by the Chilean government and reached 30% of student loan applicants. We show that the low-income and low-achieving students who apply to low-earning college degree programs overestimate earnings for past graduates by over 100%, while beliefs for high-achieving students are correctly centered. Treatment causes low-income students to reduce their demand for low-return degrees by 4.6%, and increases the likelihood they remain in college for at least four years. To understand the mechanisms driving the effect of disclosure policies we estimate a model of college demand. We find that disclosure changes college choice by reducing uncertainty about earnings outcomes, but that its impact is limited by strong student preferences for non-pecuniary degree attributes.

Keywords: College; Enrollment; Earnings Disclosure; Chile (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H0 H52 I22 I23 I24 I26 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://christopherneilson.github.io/work/documents/w21300.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effects of Earnings Disclosure on College Enrollment Decisions (2015)
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:pri:econom:2015-1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Princeton University. Economics Department. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bobray Bordelon ().