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THREE ESSAYS ON LABOR MARKETS, WAGES, AND STUDENT FINANCING
Dissertation

THREE ESSAYS ON LABOR MARKETS, WAGES, AND STUDENT FINANCING

Jingjie Xu
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2026
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Abstract

This dissertation applies econometric methods to study individual outcomes in labor markets and university student finance. In the first chapter, we use Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to estimate the causal impact of short-term incarceration on employment outcomes and residentialmobility, finding that a single incarceration spell of less than 12 months significantly reduces employability, lowers income, and decreases residential mobility. In the second chapter, we use the NLSY97 to investigate how parental expectations and youth self-expectations relate to adult wage outcomes. Reduced-form estimates indicate that parental expectations exhibit a stronger association with wages among non-high school graduates while self-expectations matter more among high school graduates. Within the high school graduate subsample, the correlation between parental and self-expectations weakens as the informativeness of academic signals — proxied by 8th-grade grades — increases, though the estimates lack the statistical power to confirm a direct causal link between expectations and wages. In the third chapter, we use administrative data from an R1 public research university to estimate the substitution effect of scholarships and institutional tuition waivers on student loan borrowing across ten undergraduate cohorts (Fall 2012–Fall 2022), finding a substitution rate of $0.17 per dollar that operates primarily through the amount borrowed, with similar effects for resident and non-resident students, larger reductions for larger awards, and the strongest response among private loans.

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