The Big Sort: College Reputation and Labor Market Outcomes

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: MacLeod, W. Bentley; Riehl, Evan; Saavedra, Juan E.; Urquiola, Miguel
• 署名单位: Columbia University; University of Southern California
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20160126
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 223-261
• 关键词: public-schools; job search; education; earnings; QUALITY; INFORMATION; matter; wages

摘要

We explore how college reputation affects the big sort, the process by which students choose colleges and find their first jobs. We incorporate a simple definition of college reputation-graduates' mean admission scores-into a competitive labor market model. This generates a clear prediction: if employers use reputation to set wages, then the introduction of a new measure of individual skill will decrease the return to reputation. Administrative data and a natural experiment from the country of Colombia confirm this. Finally, we show that college reputation is positively correlated with graduates' earnings growth, suggesting that reputation matters beyond signaling individual skill.