Formation of College Plans: Expected Returns, Preferences, and Adjustment Process
Journal of the European Economic Association · 2023 · Ghazala Azmat、Katja Kaufmann
中文摘要
我们利用一次大规模外生冲击，研究教育计划的形成与更新，并考察这些计划最终如何影响后续的受教育程度。我们使用涵盖两德统一前后东德青少年队列的新型纵向微观数据，并利用统一时点所造成的队列间差异展开研究。对东德而言，两德统一意味着从国家社会主义向资本主义民主制度的转变。研究表明，与统一前相比，统一后不久高中生的大学升学计划大幅增加，随后，五年后大学入学资格证书的取得情况也出现了大幅增长。为揭示其背后的机制，我们分析了青少年的信念与偏好对这一大规模冲击的弹性。他们所感知的教育回报与风险、经济偏好（“消费主义”）和社会偏好（“个人主义”）均迅速调整，并与计划和结果的变化直接相关。然而，统一发生时更接近关键教育节点的队列，其计划调整幅度要小得多。尽管这些队列同样更新了对教育回报的预期，但与较年轻的队列相比，其偏好调整得更慢。
Abstract
Abstract We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the formation, and updating, of educational plans, and to examine how these plans ultimately impact later educational attainment. Using novel, longitudinal, microdata on cohorts of East German adolescents before and after the German Reunification (a change for the East from state socialism to capitalist democracy), and using differences across cohorts induced by the timing of Reunification, we show that shortly after relative to before that time, college plans among high-school students increased substantially, which was followed by sizable increases in the completion of the college entrance certificate 5 years later. To shed light on the underlying mechanisms, we analyze the elasticity of youths’ beliefs and preferences with respect to the large shock. Perceived educational returns and risk, economic preferences (“consumerism”) and social preferences (“individualism”) adapt quickly and are directly linked to changes in plans and outcomes. Cohorts closer to critical educational junctions at the time of Reunification, however, adjusted their plans to a much lesser extent. While they similarly updated the expected returns to education, they exhibited a slower adjustment in their preferences relative to younger cohorts.