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Three Essays on the Economics of Education and Human Capital

Title:

Three Essays on the Economics of Education and Human Capital

Ranjbar, Saba (2023) Three Essays on the Economics of Education and Human Capital. PhD thesis, Concordia University.

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Abstract

This thesis consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I estimate a dynamic model
of schooling on two longitudinal datasets and find that the effect of relative family income
on education has decreased between the early 1990’s and the early 2010’s. After considering
a cognitive ability measure, family background variables and unobserved heterogeneity, the
marginal effects of relative income on grade progression in college have become smaller for
the younger cohort and the differences between the two cohorts are not statistically significant.
Meanwhile, in the same period, the effect of unobserved heterogeneity in explaining
the variation in educational attainment has increased significantly.
In the second chapter, I study the effect of participation in after-school activities and
working while in school on high school performance in the US. Since the decision to work
or participate in extracurricular activities is endogenous, several methods were used in this
paper to overcome this issue. The results show that working has a detrimental impact
on individuals’ GPAs. Contrary to the effect of working, participating in extracurricular
activities significantly improves academic performance.
In the third chapter, I estimate a dynamic factor model of the evolution of cognitive
and noncognitive skills and the role of the family environment in moulding these skills in
the teenage years. The results show that parental investments (both in terms of time and
money) improved noncognitive skills but not cognitive skills for the 1988 cohort. The effect
on cognitive skills has increased in the later cohort.

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Economics
Item Type:Thesis (PhD)
Authors:Ranjbar, Saba
Institution:Concordia University
Degree Name:Ph. D.
Program:Economics
Date:8 September 2023
Thesis Supervisor(s):Hansen, Jorgen
Keywords:Economics of Education, Educational Attainment, Student Employment, Extracurricular Activities, skill formation, factor analysis, cognitive skills, noncognitive skills, family income, unobserved heterogeneity
ID Code:993143
Deposited By: Saba Ranjbar
Deposited On:05 Jun 2024 15:12
Last Modified:05 Jun 2024 15:12

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