Michael F. Lovenheim

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Cornell University

This paper estimates the long-run impacts of banning affirmative action on men and women from under-represented minority (URM) racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Using data from the US Census and American Community Survey, we use a difference-in-differences framework to compare the college degree completion, graduate degree completion,...

A growing literature examining labor market returns to college major is motivated by large returns to skill. Prior research focuses on mean effects rather than earnings growth and variability. Using administrative data from Texas, we find that mean differences mask important features of the returns to college majors. First, earnings growth varies a...

Concurrent with the decline in private-sector unionization over the past half century, a shift has occurred in the type of work covered by unions. The authors take a skill-based approach to study this shift. For both men and women, private-sector unionized jobs have changed to require more non-routine, cognitive skills, and for women, less routine,...

We study the impact of an information shock created by an outbreak of lung injuries apparently related to e‐cigarettes. We use data from multiple sources: surveys of risk perceptions conducted before, during, and after the outbreak; an in‐depth survey on risk perceptions and vaping and smoking behavior; and national aggregate time‐series sales data...

This paper extends the monopsony literature by taking a task-based approach and estimating the causal effect of concentration on labour market outcomes. Using detailed employer-employee data from Norway, we find that our job task-based measure shows lower degrees of concentration than conventional industry-and occupation-based measures. Exploiting...

Tobacco regulation has been a major component of health policy in the developed world since the UK Royal College of Physicians’ and the US Surgeon General’s reports in the 1960s. Such regulation, which has intensified in the past two decades, includes cigarette taxation, place-based smoking bans in areas ranging from bars and restaurants to workpla...

We use Danish register data to examine intergenerational rank-rank correlations in net wealth and gross housing wealth by child age and parental income. Our results indicate that gross housing wealth correlations are more stable by child age than are net wealth correlations, which we argue is due to a downward bias in net wealth correlations from t...

For-profit providers have become an important fixture of US higher education markets. Students who attend for-profit institutions take on more educational debt and are more likely to default on their student loans than those attending similarly-selective public schools. Because for-profits tend to serve students from more disadvantaged backgrounds,...

Social programs and mandates are usually studied in isolation, but unintended spillovers to other areas can impact individual behavior and social welfare. We examine the presence of spillovers from health care policy to the education sector by studying how health insurance coverage affects the education of students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (AS...

We estimate the effect of housing price changes on fertility and early-life child health in Denmark. Using rich population register data among women aged 20–44 who own a home, we find that for each 100,000 DKK increase in home prices (equivalent to $12,000), the likelihood of giving birth increases by 0.27 percentage points or 2.35%. These estimate...

We study an intervention designed to overcome multiple hurdles faced by low-income, high-ability college students to determine if and how it affects students’ long-term outcomes. UT-Austin’s Longhorn Opportunity Scholars (LOS) program recruited at impoverished high schools and provided scholarships and enhanced support services to students who enro...

We analyze how exposure to teacher collective bargaining affects long-run outcomes for students, exploiting the timing of state duty-to-bargain law passage in a cross-cohort difference-in-difference framework. Among men, exposure to a duty-to-bargain law in the first 10 years after passage depresses annual earnings by $2,134 (3.93 percent), decreas...

We examine whether changes in the local school choice environment affect the amount of information parents collect about local school quality, using data on over 100 million searches from Greatschools.org. We link monthly data on search frequency in local “Search Units” to information on changes in local open enrollment options driven by No Child L...

This paper provides an analysis of the role of prices in determining food purchases and nutrition using very detailed transaction-level observations for a large, nationally-representative sample of US consumers over the period 2002-2007. Using product-specific nutritional information, we develop a new method of partitioning the product space into r...

This paper examines the role of worker performance feedback and measurement precision in the design of incentive pay systems, specifically in the context of an individual teacher value-added merit pay tournament. We first build a model in which workers use proximity to an award threshold to update their beliefs about their own ability, which inform...

We use administrative data from Texas to estimate how graduating from a state flagship or a community college relative to a nonflagship university affects the distribution of earnings. We control for the selection of students across sectors using a rich set of observable ability and background characteristics and find evidence of substantial hetero...

Although a sizable literature analyzes the effects of public health insurance programs on short-run health outcomes, little prior work has examined their long-term effects. We examine the effects of public insurance expansions among children in the 1980s and 1990s on their future educational attainment. We find that expanding health insurance cover...

This paper reviews the literature on affirmative action in undergraduate education and law schools, focusing especially on the trade-off between institutional quality and the fit between a school and a student. We discuss the conditions under which affirmative action for underrepresented minorities (URM) could help or harm their educational outcome...

Using data from a group incentive program that provides cash bonuses to teachers whose students perform well on standardized tests, we estimate the impact of incentive strength on student achievement. These awards are based on the performances of students within a grade, school and subject, providing substantial variation in group size. We use the...

Background How parent and sibling obesity status comparatively shape a child’s obesity is unknown. Purpose To investigate how the obesity status of different children within the same family is related to a parent or sibling’s obesity. Methods A national sample of adults in 10,244 American households was surveyed during 2011; data were analyzed in...

A considerable fraction of college students and bachelor's degree recipients enroll in multiple postsecondary institutions. Despite this fact, there is scant research that examines the nature of the paths–both the number and types of institutions–that students take to obtain a bachelor's degree or through the higher education system more generally....

The use of race in college admissions is one of the most contentious issues in US higher education. We survey the literature on the impact of racial preferences in college admissions on both minority and majority students. With regard to minority students, particular attention is paid to the scope of preferences as well as how preferences affect gr...

Early retirement incentives (ERIs) are increasingly prevalent in education as districts seek to close budget gaps by replacing expensive experienced teachers with lower cost newer teachers. Combined with the aging of the teacher workforce, these ERIs are likely to change the composition of teachers dramatically in the coming years. We use exogenous...

This paper uses wealth changes driven by housing market variation to estimate the effect of family resources on fertility decisions. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we show that a $100,000 increase in housing wealth among homeowners causes a 16-18 percent increase in the probability of having a child. There is no evidence of an...

Value-added data are an increasingly common evaluation tool for schools and teachers. Many school districts have adopted these methods and released the results publicly. In this paper, we study the release of value-added data in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Times newspaper to identify how measured value-added is capitalized into housing prices. T...

We use NLSY97 data to examine how home price variation affects the quality of postsecondary schools students attend. We find a $10,000 increase in housing wealth increases the likelihood of public flagship university enrollment relative to non flagship enrollment by 2.0 percent and decreases the relative probability of attending a community college...

In 2001, amendments to the Higher Education Act made people convicted of drug offenses ineligible for federal financial aid for up to two years after their conviction. Using rich data on educational outcomes and drug charges in the NLSY 1997, we show that this law change had a large negative impact on the college attendance of students with drug co...

We use Nielsen Homescan data to examine who bears the economic burden of cigarette taxes. We find cigarette taxes are less than fully passed through to consumer prices, suggesting consumers and producers split the excess burden of these taxes. Using information on consumer location, we show the availability of lower-tax goods across state borders c...

Introduction: Childhood obesity contributes to an elevated risk of later-life obesity and is associated comorbid conditions. While research has demonstrated a clear association between parent and offspring obesity, contributions of social context and sibling composition have not been well-specified. In this paper, we ask how different children with...

This paper uses administrative data on schooling and earnings from Texas to estimate the effect of college quality on the distribution of earnings. We proxy college quality using the college sector from which students graduate and focus on identifying how graduating from UT-Austin, Texas A\&M or a community college affects the distribution of earni...

This article uses short-run housing wealth changes to identify the effect of housing wealth on college attendance. I find that households used their housing wealth to finance postsecondary enrollment in the 2000s when housing wealth was most liquid; each $10,000 in home equity raises college enrollment by 0.7 of a percentage point on average. The e...

This paper analyzes the effect of state-level Sunday alcohol sales restrictions (“blue laws”) on fatal vehicle accidents, which is an important parameter in assessing the desirability of these laws. Using a panel data set of all fatal vehicle accidents in the U.S. between 1990 and 2009 combined with 15 state repeals of blue laws, we show that restr...

We characterize changes over time in the choices high school graduates make concerning 2-year attendance, 4-year attendance, and college nonattendance across the joint income and ability distribution. We find that college nonattendance decreased substantially between cohorts for both men and women and that these declines were larger for higher-abil...

Rising college enrollment over the last quarter century has not been met with a proportional increase in college completion. Comparing the high school classes of 1972 and 1992, we show declines in college completion rates have been most pronounced for men who first enroll in less selective public universities and community colleges. We decompose th...

While there is a great deal of literature focusing on the relationship between income and fertility, little is known about how wealth affects fertility decisions of the household. This paper fills this gap in the literature by investigating how changes in housing wealth affect fertility. In particular, we use the wealth variation supplied by the re...

Time to completion of the baccalaureate degree has increased markedly in the United States over the last three decades, even as the wage premium for college graduates has continued to rise. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 and the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, we show that the incr...

This paper documents the rise of the Internet as a source of state tax-free cigarettes and its impact on taxed sales elasticities. Using data on cigarette tax rates, taxable cigarette sales and individual smoking rates by state from 1980 to 2005 merged with data on Internet penetration, this paper documents that there has been a substantial increas...

Using a unique data set on teachers' union election certifications from Iowa, Indiana, and Minnesota, I estimate the effect of teachers' unions on school district resources and on student educational attainment. My empirical strategy allows for nonparametric leads and lags of union age. I find no impact on teacher pay or per student district expend...

There is a sizeable literature on the effect of minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) restrictions on teenage drunk driving. This paper adds to the literature by examining the effect of MLDA evasion across states with different alcohol restrictions. Using state-of-the-art GIS software and micro-data on fatal vehicle accidents from 1977 to 2002, we find...

Do liquidity constraints prohibit individuals from making optimal consumption and in-vestment decisions over the life cycle? I test for the existence of short-run credit constraints surrounding the decision to invest in college, which is of particular concern given the large re-cent increases in the real cost of college attendance. I add to the lit...

This paper uses micro-data on cigarette consumption from four waves of the CPS Tobacco Supplement to estimate cigarette demand models that incorporate the decision of whether to smuggle cigarettes across a state or Native American Reservation border. I find demand elasticities with respect to the home state price are indistinguishable from zero on...

The first paper of this dissertation utilizes unique data on teachers' union election certifications in Iowa, Indiana, and Minnesota to analyze the effect of teachers' unions on education production. I find teachers' unions have no impact on teacher pay, class sizes, or per-student expenditures, but they increase teacher employment by between 5 and...