Host: FU Shihe, Associate Professor, RIEM
Time: 2:30pm-4:00pm, May 23, Friday
Venue: H513 Yide Hall, Liulin Campus
Abstract: Estimating the rate of return to university is always difficult due to the problem of omitted variable bias. Using a special feature of the University Admission system in China, which has clear cutoffs for university entry, together with a unique data set with information on individual National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) scores, we estimate the causal effect of university education on earnings using a Regression Discontinuity (RD) design. Our findings suggest that during the fast economic growth period the return to 4-year university education in China is as high as 48 to 52 percent. This estimate is around 20% higher than that obtained using OLS regression which gives 40 to 42 percent increase in earnings. We further find that the treatment effects are likely to be higher for compliers than that for non-compliers and our RD-IV estimate for the compliers hence is likely to be higher than the average treatment effect for an average person.
About the speaker:
赵国昌现为西南财大经济与管理研究院副教授，获澳大利亚国立大学经济学博士学位。主要研究领域为劳动经济学、卫生经济学、应用计量经济学、公共政策。其论文发表于Energy Economics、经济学季刊等多种中英文期刊上。
