Sorting, Selection, and Transformation of the Return to College Education In China

We estimate selection and sorting effects on the evolution of the private return to schooling for college graduates during China’s reform between 1988 and 2002. We pay special attention to the changing role of sorting by ability versus budget-constraint effects as China’s education policy has changed from one in which the bulk of direct costs are paid by government for students who pass a rigid set of test to one in which freedom of choice is increasingly the rule for those who can afford to pay for tuition and living expenses while acquiring higher education. We find evidence of substantial sorting gains under the traditional system but that gains have diminished and even become negative as schooling choices widened and participation has become subject to increasing direct private costs. We take this as evidence consistent with the influence of financial constraints on decisions to attend college.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40142/3/wp756.pd

Access to Higher Education and Inequality: The Chinese Experiment

We apply a semi-parametric latent variable model to estimate selection and sorting effects on the evolution of private returns to schooling for college graduates during China’s reform between 1988 and 2002. We find that there were substantial sorting gains under the traditional system, but they have decreased drastically and are negligible in the most recent data. We take this as evidence of growing influence of private financial constraints on decisions to attend college as tuition costs have risen and the relative importance of government subsidies has declined. The main policy implication of our results is that labor and education reform without concomitant capital market reform and government support for the financially disadvantaged exacerbates increases in inequality inherent in elimination of the traditional "wage-grid."Return to schooling, selection bias, sorting gains, heterogeneity, financial constraints, comparative advantage, China

Transmission eigenchannels and the densities of states of random media

We show in microwave measurements and computer simulations that the contribution of each eigenchannel of the transmission matrix to the density of states (DOS) is the derivative with angular frequency of a composite phase shift. The accuracy of the measurement of the DOS determined from transmission eigenchannels is confirmed by the agreement with the DOS found from the decomposition of the field into modes. The distribution of the DOS, which underlies the Thouless number, is substantially broadened in the Anderson localization transition. We find a crossover from constant to exponential scaling of fluctuations of the DOS normalized by its average value. These results illuminate the relationships between scattering, stored energy and dynamics in complex media.Comment: Supplementary Information included at the end of the documen

Sorting, Selection, and Transformation of Return to College Education in China

We estimate selection and sorting effects on the evolution of the private return to schooling for college graduates during China’s reform between 1988 and 2002. We find evidence of substantial sorting gains under the traditional system, but gains have diminished and even become negative in the most recent data. We take this as evidence consistent with the growing influence of private financial constraints on decisions to attend college as tuition costs have risen and the relative importance of government subsidies to higher education has declined.return to schooling, sorting gains, heterogeneity, financial constraints, comparative advantage, China

Sorting, Selection, and Transformation of the Return to College Education In China

We estimate selection and sorting effects on the evolution of the private return to schooling for college graduates during China’s reform between 1988 and 2002. We pay special attention to the changing role of sorting by ability versus budget-constraint effects as China’s education policy has changed from one in which the bulk of direct costs are paid by government for students who pass a rigid set of test to one in which freedom of choice is increasingly the rule for those who can afford to pay for tuition and living expenses while acquiring higher education. We find evidence of substantial sorting gains under the traditional system but that gains have diminished and even become negative as schooling choices widened and participation has become subject to increasing direct private costs. We take this as evidence consistent with the influence of financial constraints on decisions to attend college.Return to schooling, sorting gains, heterogeneity, financial constraints, comparative advantage, China