Flores Lagunes study on length of exposure to instruction and Job Corps published in RES

Jan 31, 2012

Estimating the Effects of Length of Exposure to Instruction in a Training Program: The Case of Job Corps

Carlos A. Flores, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Arturo Gonzalez & Todd C. Neumann

The Review of Economics and Statistics, January 2012

Alfonso Flores-Lagunes

Economics Department

Aging Studies Institute

Center for Policy Research

Education

The Review of Economics and Statistics

Alfonso Flores-Lagunes

The authors semiparametrically estimate average causal effects of different lengths of exposure to academic and vocational instruction in the Job Corps (JC) under the assumption that selection into different lengths is based on a rich set of observed covariates and time-invariant factors.

They find that the estimated effects on future earnings increase in the length of exposure and that the marginal effects of additional instruction decrease with length of exposure. The authors also document differences in the estimated effects across demographic groups, which are particularly large between males and females. Finally, their results suggest an important lock-in effect in JC training.