Identification of dynamic latent factor models of skill formation with translog production

In this paper, we highlight an important property of the translog production function for the identification of treatment effects in a model of latent skill formation. We show that when using a translog specification of the skill technology, properly anchored treatment effect estimates are invariant to any location and scale normalizations of the underlying measures. By contrast, when researchers assume a CES production function and impose standard location and scale normalizations, the resulting treatment effect estimates vary with the chosen normalizations. Access to age-invariant measures does not solve this problem since arbitrary scale and location restrictions are still imposed in the initial period. We theoretically prove the normalization invariance of the translog production function and then complete several empirical exercises illustrating the effects of location and scale normalizations for different technologies and types of skills measures

Family Income and Higher Education Choices: The Importance of Accounting for College Quality

In the examination of the determinants of educational choices, little attention has been devoted to the relationship between family income and the quality of higher education. Using the 1979 and 1997 waves of the NLSY, we show that family income significantly affects the quality of higher education, especially for high-ability individuals.While the impact of family income on college quality is significant in both samples, it has declined considerably over time for high-ability students. Overall, the trends we observe are highly consistent with increases in tuition across the quality spectrum, coupled with more generous merit-based aid at high-quality institutions.

Recruit to Reject? Harvard and African American Applicants

Over the past 20 years, elite colleges in the US have seen dramatic increases in applications. We provide context for part of this trend using detailed data on Harvard University that was unsealed as part of the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit. We show that Harvard encourages applications from many students who effectively have no chance of being admitted, and that this is particularly true for African Americans. African American applications soared beginning with the Class of 2009, with the increase driven by those with lower SAT scores. Yet there was little change in the share of admits who were African American. We show that this change in applicant behavior resulted in substantial convergence in the overall admissions rates across races yet no change in the large cross-race differences in admissions rates for high-SAT applicants

Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard

The lawsuit Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard University provided an unprecedented look at how an elite school makes admissions decisions. Using publicly released reports, we examine the preferences Harvard gives for recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean's interest list, and children of faculty and staff (ALDCs). Among white admits, over 43% are ALDC. Among admits who are African American, Asian American, and Hispanic, the share is less than 16% each. Our model of admissions shows that roughly three quarters of white ALDC admits would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs. Removing preferences for athletes and legacies would significantly alter the racial distribution of admitted students, with the share of white admits falling and all other groups rising or remaining unchanged

Divergent: The Time Path of Legacy and Athlete Admissions at Harvard

Applications to elite US colleges have more than doubled over the past 20 years, with little change in the number of available seats. We examine how this increased competition has affected the admissions advantage that legacies and athletes (LA) receive. Using data on Harvard applications over 18 years, we show that non-legacy, non-athlete (NLNA) applications grew considerably and that LA applications remained at. Yet, the share of LA admits remained stable, implying substantial increases in admissions advantages for legacies and athletes. We develop a simple theoretical model of university admissions to frame our empirical analysis. Viewed through the lens of the model, stability in the share of LA admits implies that elite colleges treat the number of LA admits and overall admit quality as complements. Our empirical analysis reveals that, if the admissions advantages for LA applicants had been constant throughout this period, there would have been a large increase in the number of minority admits

Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions

Detecting racial discrimination using observational data is challenging because of the presence of unobservables that may be correlated with race. Using data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard case, we estimate discrimination in a setting where this concern is mitigated. Namely, we show that there is a substantial penalty against Asian Americans in admissions with limited scope for omitted variables to overturn the result. This is because (i) Asian Americans are substantially stronger than whites on the observables associated with admissions and (ii) the richness of the data yields a model that predicts admissions extremely well. Our preferred model shows that Asian Americans would be admitted at a rate 19% higher absent this penalty. Controlling for one of the primary channels through which Asian American applicants are discriminated against — the personal rating — cuts the Asian American penalty by less than half, still leaving a substantial penalty

Skill Formation and the Trouble with Child Non-Cognitive Skill Measures

Research on child skill formation and related policies typically rely on parent- reported measures of child non-cognitive skills. In this paper, we show that parental assessments of child non-cognitive skills are directly affected by the skills of the parents. We develop a dynamic model of child and parental skill formation that accounts for this contamination and show how standard estimates of the production of skills are affected. We then use our model to illustrate how contamination in parental measures of child non-cognitive skills affects estimates of child development policies that also directly affect parental skills

Productivity Spillovers in Team Production: Evidence from Professional Basketball ∗

Workers contribute to team production through their own productivity and through their effect on the productivity of other team members. We develop and estimate a model where workers are heterogeneous both in their own productivity and in their ability to facilitate the productivity of others. We use data from professional basketball to measure the importance of peers in productivity because we have clear measures of output and members of a worker’s group change on a regular basis. Our empirical results highlight that productivity spillovers play an important role in team production and accounting for them leads to changes in the overall assessment of a worker’s contribution. We also use the parameters from our model to show that the match between workers and teams is important and quantify the gains to specific trades of workers to alternative teams. Finally, we find that worker compensation is largely determined by own productivity with little weight given to the productivity spillovers a worker creates, despite their importance to team production. The use of our empirical model in other settings could lead to improved matching between workers and teams within a firm and compensation that is more in-line with the overall contribution that workers make to team production