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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Essays On Student Loans And Returns To Skill, Qian Liu Oct 2020

Essays On Student Loans And Returns To Skill, Qian Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis consists of three studies, which explore topics related to labor economics. Chapters 2 and 3 examine the returns on student loans and student loan repayment policy, respectively. Chapter 4 examines the returns to skill and the evolution of skills at older ages.

In Chapter 2 (co-authored with Lance Lochner), we study rates of return on government student loans in Canada using novel administrative data from the Canada Student Loans Program. We exploit rich information on personal characteristics, loan amounts, field of study, and institution of attendance to explain differences in rates of return across different types of borrowers. …


A Language Barrier To Human Capital Development: The Case Of Guatemalan Students, Fidel Pérez Macal Sep 2020

A Language Barrier To Human Capital Development: The Case Of Guatemalan Students, Fidel Pérez Macal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Not being proficient in a school’s predominant language of instruction can represent a language barrier for students’ human capital development. In Guatemala, 24 languages are spoken apart from Spanish, which is the language of instruction in the majority of schools, and about 40 percent of the total population has a non-Spanish language as a mother tongue. National standardized tests show that non-Spanish mother tongue (non-SMT) students are outperformed by SMT students in elementary and secondary schools.

My thesis analyzes whether non-SMT students face a language barrier and traces its source. Two main findings emerge. First, non-SMT students are not yet …


Essays On Criminal Behaviour, Human Capital Formation, And Mental Health, Diego F. Salazar Mar 2020

Essays On Criminal Behaviour, Human Capital Formation, And Mental Health, Diego F. Salazar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My thesis consists of three chapters that contribute to the study of some of the negative consequences of incarceration and their relation with the life-cycle choices of juvenile offenders.

Chapter 2 studies the causal relationship between incarceration and mental health problems. In this chapter, I use different matching estimators to identify the causal effects of incarceration over several dimensions of mental health using data from a survey of juvenile offenders, the Pathways to Desistance (PTD) survey. My findings show that being incarcerated for the first time, between 17 and 18 years old, increases depression by at least 0.18 standard deviations …