TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cameron,Stephen V.
AU  - Heckman,James J.
TI  - Life Cycle Schooling and Dynamic Selection Bias: Models and Evidence for Five Cohorts
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6385
PY  - 1998
Y2  - January 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6385
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6385.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Stephen Cameron
School of International and Public Affairs
Columbia University
420 West 118th Street
New York, NY 10027
E-Mail: sc337@columbia.edu

James J. Heckman
Department of Economics
The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-0634
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: jjh@uchicago.edu
AB  - This paper examines an empirical regularity found in many societies: that family influences on the probability of transiting from one grade level to the next diminish at higher levels of education.  We examine the statistical model used to establish the empirical regularity and the intuitive behavioral interpretation often used to rationalize it.  We show that the implicit economic model assumes myopia.  The intuitive interpretive model is identified only by imposing arbitrary distributional assumptions onto the data.  We produce an alternative choice-theoretic model with fewer parameters that rationalizes the same data and is not based on arbitrary distributional assumptions.
ER  -