Market power and price discrimination in the US market for higher education

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Epple, Dennis; Romano, Richard; Sarpca, Sinan; Sieg, Holger; Zaber, Melanie
• 署名单位: Carnegie Mellon University; State University System of Florida; University of Florida; Koc University; University of Pennsylvania; RAND Corporation
• 刊物名称: RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0741-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.12267
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 201-225
• 关键词: financial-aid; students; admissions; enrollment; selection; colleges; vouchers; PRIVATE; tuition; models

摘要

We estimate an equilibrium model of private and state college competition that generates realistic pricing patterns for private colleges using a large national data set from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). Our analysis distinguishes between tuition variation that reflects efficient pricing to students who generate beneficial peer externalities and variation that reflects arguably inefficient exercise of market power. Our findings indicate substantial exercise of market power and, importantly, sizable variation in this power along the college quality hierarchy and among students with different characteristics. Finally, we conduct policy analysis to examine the consequences of increased availability of quality public colleges in a state.