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Cited by 786

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Education and Self-Selection

Open access
Willis, Robert J., Rosen, Sherwin·1979·Journal of Political Economy

Abstract

A structural model of the demand for college attendance is derived from the theory of comparative advantage and recent statistical models of self-selection and unobserved components. Estimates from NBEr-Thorndike data strongly support the theory. First, expected lifetime earnings gains influence the decision to attend college. Second, those who did not attend college would have earned less than measurably similar people who did attend, while those who attended college would have earned less as high school graduates than measurably similar people who stopped after high school. Positive selection in both groups implies no "ability bias" in these data.

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Metadata

Authors
Willis, R. J., & Rosen, S.
Venue
Journal of Political Economy
Published
1979-10
Volume
87
Issue
5, Part 2
Pages
S7-S36
ISSN
  • 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-534X
OpenAlex
W2016846642
Cited by
786
References
0
FWCI
8.73
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Education and Self-Selection. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/260821
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Willis, R. J., & Rosen, S. (1979). Education and Self-Selection. Journal of Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1086/260821

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.