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  3. American Economic Review
  4. May 2015
  5. Evaluating Econometric Evaluations of Post-Secondary Aid

Evaluating Econometric Evaluations of Post-Secondary Aid

  • Josh Angrist
  • David Autor
  • Sally Hudson
  • Amanda Pallais
American Economic Review
vol. 105, no. 5, May 2015
(pp. 502-07)
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Abstract

In an ongoing evaluation of post-secondary financial aid, we use random assignment to assess the causal effects of large privately-funded aid awards. Here, we compare the unbiased causal effect estimates from our RCT with two types of non-experimental econometric estimates. The first applies a selection-on-observables assumption in data from an earlier, nonrandomized cohort; the second uses a regression discontinuity design. Selection-on-observables methods generate estimates well below the experimental benchmark. Regression discontinuity estimates are similar to experimental estimates for students near the cutoff, but sensitive to controlling for the running variable, which is unusually coarse.

Citation

Angrist, Josh, David Autor, Sally Hudson, and Amanda Pallais. 2015. "Evaluating Econometric Evaluations of Post-Secondary Aid." American Economic Review, 105 (5): 502-07. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20151025

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • C52 Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection
  • I22 Educational Finance; Financial Aid
  • I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions