利用教育决策估计消费边际效用弹性

This paper uses schooling decisions to estimate curvature in utility of consumption in developing countries. We show that the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption (EMUC) can be recovered from three sufficient statistics: (1) the price effect of schooling; (2) the income effect of schooling; and (3) the consumption cost of sending a child to school. We estimate the consumption cost of schooling using variation from the randomized roll-out of Progresa, a conditional cash transfer program in rural Mexico. Using estimates of income and price effects in the Progresa setting from Bergstrom and Dodds (2021), we estimate the EMUC at 1.6.