Inequality in Parental Transfers and Optimal Need-Based Financial Aid Staff working paper 2019-7 Youngmin Park This paper studies optimal need-based financial aid when parental transfers—unobserved by policymakers—vary across and within families of similar means. Using data on U.S. college students, I document substantial inequality in parental transfers, especially among wealthier families. I then analyze how this affects aid design aimed at reducing inefficiencies from borrowing constraints and the aid itself. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): D, D1, D14, D6, D61, D64, D8, D82, I, I2, I22, J, J2, J24 Research Theme(s): Financial system, Household and business credit, Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting, Structural challenges, Demographics and labour supply
The Evolution of Unobserved Skill Returns in the U.S.: A New Approach Using Panel Data Staff working paper 2017-61 Lance Lochner, Youngmin Park, Youngki Shin Economists disagree about the factors driving the substantial increase in residual wage inequality in the United States over the past few decades. To identify changes in the returns to unobserved skills, we make a novel assumption about the dynamics of skills (especially among older workers) rather than about the stability of skill distributions across cohorts, as is standard. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers JEL Code(s): C, C2, C23, J, J2, J24, J3, J31 Research Theme(s): Models and tools, Econometric, statistical and computational methods, Monetary policy, Real economy and forecasting, Structural challenges, Demographics and labour supply