This dissertation consists of three independent chapters in applied microeconomics. In the first chapter, I study the causal effect impact of early life circumstances on adult psychological well-being using the property reform in China as a positive and policy driven change in economic resources in early life. Exploiting the staggered adoption of…

Objective: Problems with credit mobility, or the transfer of credits from a sending to a receiving institution, may be one reason why community college transfer students have low rates of bachelor's degree completion. This study investigates different policy approaches to credit mobility and how college staff and students experience transfer at…

Community colleges in the United States have long been known as institutions of equal opportunity and affordable education. One facet of student life appearing at more and more community colleges is the addition of residence halls. Still, the number of community colleges with on-campus living is relatively small, and for the campuses with…

In 2007, Washington adopted the Student Achievement Initiative, a statewide performance accountability system designed to improve retention rates and degree productivity among community colleges. Using difference-in-differences analysis, we found that the policy change has had little immediate effect on retention rates or associate's degree…

This study reviews the historical trend of college revenues and expenditures from a national perspective using primarily data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) as reported by the Delta Project for the years 1999-2009. Looking at trends related to state and local appropriations, college costs and prices, output, and…

After decades of focusing on expansion and access, California's institutions of higher education are now being handed a more difficult charge: to dramatically increase the number of college graduates with diminishing state funding. There is a growing consensus that the United States needs to ratchet up its production of college graduates to turn…

Recent research indicates that college students who transfer from community colleges are significantly less likely to complete a 4-year college degree than students who begin at 4-year institutions. This paper estimates models of college completion for both types of students. Based on these results, an Oaxaca decomposition indicates that students…