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Does Examination Hell Pay Off? A Cost-Benefit Analysis of "Ronin" and College Education in Japan

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College-bound students in Japan undergo a process of intense preparation known as examination hell. An extreme manifestation of examination hell is the ronin phenomenon. Typically thirty percent of students choose the ronin option under which they spend years in addition to high school preparing for the next year fs college entrance examinations. Using the mean scores of the entrance examinations as a measure of college quality, I find that college quality significantly improves the internal rate of return (IRR) to college education among the sample of male graduates in Japan. Ronin increases earnings indirectly by improving the quality of the college attended. I also show that the IRR with respect to ronin is one of diminishing returns. On average, the number of ronin years which maximizes the IRR is found to be somewhere between one and two years.

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  • Ono, Hiroshi, 1999. "Does Examination Hell Pay Off? A Cost-Benefit Analysis of "Ronin" and College Education in Japan," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 346, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0346
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    3. John Jerrim & Álvaro Choi, 2013. "The mathematics skills of school children: how does England compare to the high performing east Asian jurisdictions?," Working Papers 2013/12, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
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    7. Daiji Kawaguchi & Hiroshi Ono, 2013. "Educational Credentialism and Elite Formation in Japan: A Long-term Perspective," Working Papers e054, Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
    8. John Jerrim & Alvaro Choi, 2013. "The mathematics skills of school children: How does England compare to the high performing East Asian jurisdictions?," DoQSS Working Papers 13-03, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    9. Trang M. T. Phung & Quoc N. Tran & Phuong Nguyen‐Hoang & Nhut H. Nguyen & Tho H. Nguyen, 2023. "The role of learning motivation on financial knowledge among Vietnamese college students," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 529-563, January.
    10. Zheng, Xiaodong & Wang, Chengcheng & Shen, Zheng & Fang, Xiangming, 2020. "Associations of private tutoring with Chinese students’ academic achievement, emotional well-being, and parent-child relationship," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    11. ISOZUMI Koji & ITO Hirotake & NAKAMURO Makiko & YAMAGUCHI Shintaro, 2021. "Is Entering a Selective School the Ultimate Goal or Just a Start? The Effect of Ordinal Rank on Academic Achievement and College Quality in a Selective Secondary School," Discussion papers 21086, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
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    13. Álvaro Choi de Mendizábal & Jorge Calero Martínez & Oriol Escardíbul Ferrà, 2011. "Hell to touch the sky? Private tutoring and academic achievement in Korea," Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación volume 6, in: Antonio Caparrós Ruiz (ed.), Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación 6, edition 1, volume 6, chapter 7, pages 118-134, Asociación de Economía de la Educación.
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    15. Gabriel Heller Sahlgren, 2014. "Handing Over the School Keys: The Impact of Privatisation on Education Quality," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 196-210, June.
    16. Kubota, Kohei, 2016. "Effects of Japanese compulsory educational reforms on household educational expenditure," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 47-60.
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    18. Seongsoo Choi, 2018. "Fewer mothers with more colleges? The impacts of expansion in higher education on first marriage and first childbirth," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 39(20), pages 593-634.
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    Keywords

    Human capital formation; economics of education; examination hell; ronin; cost-benefit analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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