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Perceived and actual option values of college enrollment

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  • Yifan Gong
  • Todd Stinebrickner
  • Ralph Stinebrickner

Abstract

An important feature of postsecondary schooling is the experimentation that accompanies sequential decision making. Specifically, by entering college, a student gains the option to decide at a future time whether it is optimal to remain in college or to drop out, after resolving uncertainty that existed at entrance about factors that affect the return to college. This paper uses data from the Berea Panel Study to quantify the value of this option. The unique nature of the data allows us to make a distinction between “actual” option values and “perceived” option values and to examine the accuracy of students' perceptions.

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  • Yifan Gong & Todd Stinebrickner & Ralph Stinebrickner, 2020. "Perceived and actual option values of college enrollment," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(7), pages 940-959, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:japmet:v:35:y:2020:i:7:p:940-959
    DOI: 10.1002/jae.2795
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    Cited by:

    1. Romuald Meango & Esther Mirjam Girsberger, 2023. "Identification of Ex ante Returns Using Elicited Choice Probabilities: an Application to Preferences for Public-sector Jobs," Papers 2303.03009, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    2. Romuald Méango & François Poinas, 2023. "The (Option-) Value of Overstaying," CESifo Working Paper Series 10536, CESifo.
    3. Crossley, Thomas F. & Gong, Yifan & Stinebrickner, Ralph & Stinebrickner, Todd, 2022. "The ex post accuracy of subjective beliefs: A new measure and decomposition," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).

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