John R. Green

I am a 5th year PhD student at Johns Hopkins University. I am a labor economist specializing in education and public economics.

Works in progress

  1. Subjective Beliefs and the Choices of Community College Students (job market paper)

    Economists are increasingly modeling decision making with limited information and subjective beliefs. Education choice has been a fruitful area for this research, but despite their important role as engines of economic mobility, the decisions of community college students have been largely neglected. I present novel survey data from a large and diverse Maryland community college, with data on beliefs about the labor market returns to 2- and 4-year degrees and offering the first systematic look at the subjective beliefs of community college students about dropout risk and tuition cost after transfer to 4-year school. I find evidence that student beliefs about graduation and tuition costs in 4-year programs deviate significantly from rational expectations; respondents appear pessimistic about the cost of 4-year school, but optimistic about the probability of graduation after transfer, with ambiguous net effect. I use multinomial logit, motivated by a simple static random utility model, to show how intentions to pursue 2- and 4-year degrees depend on expected outcomes from each degree, and show that expected non-pecuniary returns are more important than the expected wage premium. I introduce a dynamic model of education choice, consumption, and labor supply; in future work I will estimate the model and use it to explore the costs of biases and to evaluate financial aid policies. The second wave of the survey, planned for fall 2025, will allow me to model belief formation and evaluate the accuracy of first round expectations.

  2. Labor Supply, Social Welfare, and the Great MTR Pivot in U.S. Tax and Transfer Programs (with Emma Kalish and Robert Moffitt)

  3. Labor Market Outcomes from Workforce Training Programs: An Application of a New Method to Recover Wages Using Administrative Earnings Data (with Wonsik Ko and Su Wang)