Tyler Ransom

I argue that increased consumption of vegetable seed oils high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats has driven obesity in the United States, a link overlooked in the economics literature. Obesity rates have closely tracked the level of seed oils in the food supply since 1960, while diverging from calorie intake and exercise trends post-2000. I present evidence from biochemistry supporting this hypothesis, demonstrating how seed oils disrupt metabolism, fat storage, and other biochemical processes. I document supporting evidence of these mechanisms in economics research and population health trends. I then develop a conceptual theory of imperfect information to explain consumer overconsumption of these oils, considering the interactions among food and drug companies, scientists, government regulators, and medical providers in shaping dietary information and the overall food supply. Finally, I discuss policy implications, emphasizing the need for a coordinated approach.

We examine how informational frictions impact schooling and work outcomes. To do so, we estimate a dynamic structural model where individuals face uncertainty about their academic ability and productivity, which respectively determine their schooling utility and wages. Our framework accounts for heterogeneity in college types and majors, as well as occupational search frictions and work hours. Individuals learn from grades and wages in a correlated manner, and may change their choices as a result. Removing informational frictions would increase the college graduation rate by 4.4 percentage points, which would increase further by 2 percentage points in the absence of search frictions. Providing students with full information about their abilities would also result in large increases in the college and white-collar wage premia, while reducing the college graduation gap by family income.

GitHub repository
Harvard Dataverse repository

 
@article{AHMR2025,
author = {Arcidiacono, Peter and Aucejo, Esteban and Maurel, Arnaud and Ransom, Tyler},
title = {College Attrition and the Dynamics of Information Revelation},
journal = {Journal of Political Economy},
volume = {133},
number = {1},
pages = {},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1086/732526}
}
 

NBER Working Paper No. 22325 (June 2016)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 16585 (November 2023)
Accepted Version (January 2024)

We examine how increased admissions competition at elite US colleges has affected the admissions advantage that legacies and athletes (LA) receive. Using 18 years of Harvard admissions data, we show that non-legacy, non-athlete (NLNA) applications expanded while LA applications remained flat. Yet, the share of LA admits remained stable, implying substantial increases in LA admissions advantages. These facts imply a strong degree of complementarity in the number of LA admits and overall admit quality. If the admissions advantages for LA applicants had been constant throughout this period, there would have been a large increase in the number of minority admits.

Online Appendix

Data & code for replication

 
@article{AKR2024JHR,
author = {Arcidiacono, Peter and Kinsler, Josh and Ransom, Tyler},
title = {Divergent: The Time Path of Legacy and Athlete Admissions at Harvard},
journal = {Journal of Human Resources},
volume = {59},
number = {3},
pages = {653--683},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.3368/jhr.0421-11641R1}
}
 

Accepted version (December 2021)
NBER Working Paper No. 26315 (September 2019)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 12634
HCEO Working Paper No. 2019-081 (December 2019)

Using detailed admissions data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC cases, we examine how racial preferences for under-represented minorities (URMs) affect their admissions to Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill. At Harvard, the admit rates for typical African American applicants are on average over four times larger than if they had been treated as white. For typical Hispanic applicants the increase is 2.4 times. At UNC, preferences vary substantially by whether the applicant is in-state or out-of-state. For in-state applicants, racial preferences result in an over 70% increase in the African American admit rate. For out-of-state applicants, the increase is more than tenfold. Both universities provide larger racial preferences to URMs from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.

Accepted version (March 2023)
NBER Working Paper No. 29964 (April 2022)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 15240 (April 2022)

Hoover Institution

Data & code for replication (Harvard Dataverse)

 
@article{AKR2023,
author = {Arcidiacono, Peter and Kinsler, Josh and Ransom, Tyler},
title = {What the Students for Fair Admissions Cases Reveal about Racial Preferences},
journal = {Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics},
volume = {1},
number = {4},
pages = {615--668},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.1086/725336}
}
 

Marginal Revolution
Inside Higher Ed
The Economics Review podcast
The Education Exchange podcast
The Genius of Thomas Sowell podcast
Yahoo! News

Researchers striving to ensure rigor in their scientific findings face a common pitfall: Endogeneity. To tackle this problem, scholars have increasingly adopted instrumental variables estimation (IVE). Although there are many published works showing how IVE should be used, many applied researchers still have trouble understanding how to use the method correctly. In this article, we provide a methodological overview of IVE by discussing the underlying conditions valid instruments must satisfy as well as common mistakes made in using IVE. Using simulated data, we further demonstrate the sensitivity of IVE to violations of its conditions. We then take stock of the literature in a social science discipline (i.e., leadership research) and provide insights regarding trends and shortcomings in the application of IVE. We conclude by providing non-technical guidelines useful for applied social science researchers to ensure they use IVE correctly.

Online Appendix and Replication Files (OSF)

 
@article{bastardoz_al2023LQ,
author = {Nicolas Bastardoz and Michael J. Matthews and Gwendolin Sajons and Tyler Ransom and Thomas K. Kelemen and Samuel H. Matthews},
title = {Instrumental Variables Estimation: Assumptions, Pitfalls, and Guidelines},
journal = {The Leadership Quarterly},
volume = {34},
number = {1},
pages = {101673},
year = {2023},
note = {The Leadership Quarterly Yearly Review (LQYR) for 2023.},
doi = {10.1016/j.leaqua.2022.101673}
}
 

This paper investigates how migration and location choice decisions depend on a large set of location characteristics, with particular focus on measuring the importance and nature of non-monetary costs of moving. We employ a stated-preference approach to elicit respondents' choice probabilities for a set of hypothetical choice scenarios, using two waves from the NY Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations. Our stated probabilistic choice approach allows us to recover the distribution of individual-level preferences for location and mobility attributes without concerns about omitted variables and selection biases that hamper analyses based on observed mobility choices alone. We estimate substantial heterogeneity in the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for location characteristics and in moving costs, both across and within demographic groups. We find moving costs to be strongly associated with attachment to the current neighborhood and dwelling and to social networks. Our results indicate evidence of sorting into current locations based on preferences for location attributes as well as a strong negative association between respondents' non-monetary moving costs and their moving expectations and actual mobility decisions.

Online Appendix

Data & code for replication

 
@article{kosar_al2022,
author = {Gizem Ko\c{s}ar and Tyler Ransom and Wilbert {van der Klaauw}},
title = {Understanding Migration Aversion Using Elicited Counterfactual Choice Probabilities},
journal = {Journal of Econometrics},
volume = {231},
number = {1},
pages = {123--147},
year = {2022},
note = {Annals Issue: Subjective Expectations \& Probabilities in Economics.},
doi = {10.1016/j.jeconom.2020.07.056}
}
 

Preprint (June 22, 2020)
CESifo Working Paper No. 8117 (February 2020)
New York Fed Staff Report No. 883 (April 2019)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 12271 (April 2019)

CityLab

Elite colleges in the US have seen dramatic increases in applications over the past few decades, in part the result of expanded applicant recruiting. However, broadening the applicant pool while also maintaining diversity may require encouraging applications from individuals who have little to no chance of admission. We shed new light on this behavior using detailed data on Harvard University that was made public as part of the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit. We show that Harvard encourages applications from many students who effectively have no chance of being admitted, and that this is particularly true for African Americans. After a 28-year period where the African American share of applicants to Harvard was roughly stable, the African American share of applicants grew by almost 57% over four years. Yet, there was little change in the share of admits who were African American, consistent with our finding that the increase in applications was driven by those with lower SAT scores. We show that this change in applicant behavior resulted in substantial convergence in the overall admissions rates across races yet no change in the large cross-race differences in admissions rates for high-SAT applicants.

Online Appendix

Data & code for replication

 
@article{AKR2022EcoEduRev,
author = {Peter Arcidiacono and Josh Kinsler and Tyler Ransom},
title = {Recruit to Reject? Harvard and African American Applicants},
journal = {Economics of Education Review},
volume = {88},
pages = {102255},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.1016/j.econedurev.2022.102255}
}
 

Accepted version (April 2022)
NBER Working Paper No. 26456 (November 2019)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 12750 (November 2019)
HCEO Working Paper No. 2019-074 (December 2019)

New York Times
Marginal Revolution
Inside Higher Ed
Harvard Crimson
National Review
Washington Free Beacon
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

Using detailed admissions data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard case, we examine how Asian American applicants are treated relative to similarly situated white applicants. Our preferred model shows that typical Asian American applicants would see their average admit rate rise by around 1 percentage point (19%) if they were treated as white applicants. We show that one of the channels through which Asian Americans are penalized is the personal rating and that including the personal rating cuts the Asian American penalty by less than half. While identifying the causal impact of race using observational data is challenging because of the presence of unobservables, this concern is mitigated in our setting. There is limited scope for omitted variables to overturn the result because (i) Asian Americans are substantially stronger than whites on the observables associated with admissions and (ii) the richness of the data yields a model that predicts admissions extremely well.

Online Appendix

Data & code for replication

 
@article{AKR2022EurEcoRev,
author = {Peter Arcidiacono and Josh Kinsler and Tyler Ransom},
title = {Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions},
journal = {European Economic Review},
volume = {144},
pages = {104079},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104079}
}
 

Published PDF
Accepted version
NBER Working Paper No. 27068 (April 2020)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 13172 (April 2020)

Marginal Revolution
Vox's The Weeds podcast (50:00 mark)
National Review

Search frictions and switching costs may grant monopsony power to incumbent employers by reducing workers' outside options. This paper examines the role of labor market frictions and moving costs in explaining worker flows across US labor markets. Using data on non-college-educated workers from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), I estimate a dynamic model of job search and location choice. I find that moving costs are substantial and that labor market frictions primarily inhibit the employed. Reducing these frictions would result in a higher wage elasticity of labor supply to the firm and could reduce employer monopsony power.

Online Appendix

Data & code for replication

 
@article{ransom2022JHR,
author = {Ransom, Tyler},
title = {Labor Market Frictions and Moving Costs of the Employed and Unemployed},
journal = {Journal of Human Resources},
volume = {57},
number = {S},
pages = {S137--S166},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.3368/jhr.monopsony.0219-10013R2}
}
 

Published PDF
Accepted version (February 2021)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 12139 (February 2019)
The Effect of Business Cycle Fluctuations on Migration Decisions (February 25, 2016)

We use public documents from the Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard University lawsuit to examine admissions preferences for recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean's interest list, and children of faculty and staff (ALDCs). Over 43% of white admits are ALDC; the share for African American, Asian American, and Hispanics is less than 16%. Our model of admissions shows that roughly three-quarters of white ALDC admits would have been rejected absent their ALDC status. Removing preferences for athletes and legacies would significantly alter the racial distribution of admitted students away from whites.

Data & code for replication

 
@article{AKR2022JOLE,
author = {Arcidiacono, Peter and Kinsler, Josh and Ransom, Tyler},
title = {Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard},
journal = {Journal of Labor Economics},
volume = {40},
number = {1},
pages = {133--156},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.1086/713744}
}
 

Published PDF
Accepted version (December 2020)
NBER Working Paper No. 26316 (September 2019)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 12633 (September 2019)
HCEO Working Paper No. 2019-080 (December 2019)

NBC News
New York Times
The Guardian (x2)
The Economist
The Atlantic
Bloomberg
Slate
Quartz
Inside Higher Ed
National Review
Washington Examiner
Mother Jones
Marginal Revolution
Washington Center for Equitable Growth
The Cut
Moguldom
The College Fix
538's Significant Digits
The Daily Pennsylvanian
Atlanta Black Star
The Cavalier Daily
New York Magazine
Jezebel
The Harvard Crimson (x2)
The Daily Princetonian
The Brown Daily Herald
The Root
Salon
Le Monde
The Hechinger Report
NextShark
The Logical Indian

This paper investigates the wage returns to schooling and actual early work experiences, and how these returns have changed over the past twenty years. Using the NLSY surveys, we develop and estimate a dynamic model of the joint schooling and work decisions that young men make in early adulthood, and quantify how they affect wages using a generalized Mincerian specification. Our results highlight the need to account for dynamic selection and changes in composition when analyzing changes in wage returns. In particular, we find that ignoring the selectivity of accumulated work experiences results in overstatement of the returns to education.

Online Appendix

Data & code for replication

 
@article{ashworth_al2021JOLE,
author = {Ashworth, Jared and Hotz, V. Joseph and Maurel, Arnaud and Ransom, Tyler},
title = {Changes across Cohorts in Wage Returns to Schooling and Early Work Experiences},
journal = {Journal of Labor Economics},
volume = {39},
number = {4},
pages = {931--964},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.1086/711851}
}
 

Published PDF
Accepted version (September 2020)
NBER Working Paper No. 24160 (December 2017)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 11231 (December 2017)

MarketWatch
Sydney Morning Herald
Study International

I examine the extent to which the monetary returns to college majors are influenced by selective migration and occupational choice across locations in the US. To quantify the role of selection, I develop and estimate an extended Roy model of migration, occupational choice, and earnings where, upon completing their education, individuals choose a location in which to live and an occupation in which to work. In order to estimate this high-dimensional choice model, I make use of machine learning methods that allow for model selection and estimation simultaneously in a non-parametric setting. I find that OLS estimates of the return to business and STEM majors relative to education majors are biased upward by 15% at the median. Selection is strongest in locations in the Northeastern US.

Data & code for replication

 
@article{ransom2021AES,
author = {Tyler Ransom},
title = {Selective Migration, Occupational Choice, and the Wage Returns to College Majors},
journal = {Annals of Economics and Statistics},
number = {142},
pages = {45--110},
volume = {},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.15609/annaeconstat2009.142.0045}
}
 

IZA Discussion Paper No. 13370 (June 2020)

We use standardized end-of-course knowledge assessments to examine student learning during the disruptions induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining seven economics courses taught at four US R1 institutions, we find that students performed substantially worse, on average, in Spring 2020 when compared to Spring or Fall 2019. We find no evidence that the effect was driven by specific demographic groups. However, our results suggest that teaching methods that encourage active engagement, such as the use of small group activities and projects, played an important role in mitigating this negative effect. Our results point to methods for more effective online teaching as the pandemic continues.

 
@article{orlov_al2021EL,
author = {George Orlov and Douglas McKee and James Berry and Austin Boyle and Thomas DiCiccio and Tyler Ransom and Alex Rees-Jones and J{\"o}rg Stoye},
title = {Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: It Is Not Who You Teach, but How You Teach},
journal = {Economics Letters},
volume = {202},
pages = {109812},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.1016/j.econlet.2021.109812}
}
 

Published version
Preprint (January 2021)
NBER Working Paper No. 28022 (October 2020)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 13813 (October 2020)

Inside Higher Ed
VoxEU
IZA World of Labor
Cornell University
Education Next

This paper examines effects of the U.S. Immigration Act of 1990 on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and labor market outcomes for nativeborn Americans. The Act increased the inflow and stock of foreign STEM workers in the U.S., potentially altering the relative desirability of STEM fields for natives. The authors examine effects of the policy on STEM degree completion, STEM occupational choice, and employment rates separately for black and white men and women. The novel identification strategy measures exposure to foreign STEM workers of age-18 native cohorts immediately before and after the policy change via geographic dispersion of foreign-born STEM workers in 1980, which predicts subsequent foreign STEM flows. The Act affected natives in three ways: (1) black male students moved away from STEM majors; (2) white male STEM graduates moved away from STEM occupations; and (3) white female STEM graduates moved out of the workforce.

Online Appendix

Code for replication (data available from journal website)

 
@article{ransomWinters2021ILRR,
author = {Tyler Ransom and John V. Winters},
title ={Do Foreigners Crowd Natives out of STEM Degrees and Occupations? Evidence from the US Immigration Act of 1990},
journal = {ILR Review},
volume = {74},
number = {2},
pages = {321--351},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.1177/0019793919894554}
}
 

Published PDF
Preprint (January 9, 2019)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 9920 (April 2016)

 
@article{AKR2020UCLRO,
author = {Arcidiacono, Peter and Kinsler, Josh and Ransom, Tyler},
title = {Affirmative Action, Transparency, and the {\em SFFA v.\ Harvard} Case},
journal = {University of Chicago Law Review Online},
volume = {},
number = {},
pages = {},
month = {October},
year = {2020},
url = {https://lawreviewblog.uchicago.edu/2020/10/30/aa-arcidiacono/}
}
 

This paper examines trends in the college wage premium (CWP) by birth cohort across the five major household surveys in the United States: the Census/ACS, CPS, NLSY, PSID, and SIPP. We document a general flattening in the CWP for birth cohorts 1970 and onward in each survey and even a decline for birth cohorts 1980–1984 in the NLSY. We discuss potential reasons for this finding and show that the empirical discrepancy is not a function of differences in composition across surveys. Our results provide crucial context for the vast economic literatures that use these surveys to answer important policy questions about intertemporal changes in the returns to skill.

Online Appendix

Data & code for replication

 
@article{ashworthRansom2019EcoEduRev,
author = {Jared Ashworth and Tyler Ransom},
title = {Has the College Wage Premium Continued to Rise? Evidence From Multiple U.S. Surveys},
journal = {Economics of Education Review},
volume = {69},
pages = {149--154},
year = {2019},
doi = {10.1016/j.econedurev.2019.02.003}
}
 

Published PDF
Preprint (February 14, 2019)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 11657 (July 2018)

We examine the extent to which participation in high school athletics has beneficial effects on future education, labor market, and health outcomes. Due to the absence of plausible instruments in observational data, we use recently developed methods that relate selection on observables with selection on unobservables to estimate bounds on the causal effect of athletics participation. We analyze these effects in the US separately for men and women using three different nationally representative longitudinal data sets that each link high school athletics participation with later-life outcomes. We do not find consistent evidence of individual benefits reported in many previous studies—once we have accounted for selection, high school athletes are no more likely to attend college, earn higher wages, or participate in the labor force. However, we do find that men (but not women) who participated in high school athletics are more likely to exercise regularly as adults. Nevertheless, athletes are no less likely to be obese.

Data & code for replication

 
@article{ransomRansom2018EcoEduRev,
author = {Michael R Ransom and Tyler Ransom},
title = {Do High School Sports Build or Reveal Character? Bounding Causal Estimates of Sports Participation},
journal = {Economics of Education Review},
volume = {64},
pages = {75--89},
year = {2018},
doi = {10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.04.002}
}
 

Published PDF
Preprint (March 30, 2018)
IZA Discussion Paper No. 11110 (October 2017)

Marginal Revolution
LRN Media

Does temperature affect real economic activity? Using the annual Current Population Survey between 1963 and 2015, we show that there is no association between temperature and earnings, hours, or output after controlling for time-invariant spatial heterogeneity and time-varying demographic factors. These results are robust to five separate sources of micro-data, different sampling horizons, functional forms, spatial measures of temperature, and subsets of the data. This paper studies the relationship between temperature and productivity across space and time. Motivated by these null results, we develop a spatial equilibrium model where temperature can affect not only firm productivity, but also individual locational choice. After calibrating the model, we use it to disentangle the role of reallocation versus actual productivity losses in the U.S. economy between 1980 and 2015. Nearly all of the variation is driven by reallocation. We subsequently use the model to evaluate a counterfactual climate scenario and recover a new spatial equilibrium for the U.S. economy by 2050.

This paper documents a new stylized fact about the United States labor market: internal migration rates are dramatically different across college majors. For some college majors, migration rates are even lower than those without a college degree. I relate major migration rates with majors' spatial concentration and find that a major's spatial concentration explains about one fourth of the cross-major variation in migration rates. With this descriptive evidence as a guide, I estimate a structural model of locational choice where college graduates have heterogeneous preferences---at the detailed major level---for living close to home, and for working in a location with a high concentration of their fellow majors. Using estimates of the structural model, I decompose the cross-major migration rates into supply and demand factors and find that supply factors (i.e. moving costs) explain the vast majority of differences in migration rates across majors. My findings underscore the difficulty in attracting college majors to a particular location using demand-side investments. My results also highlight the importance of place in determining the labor market outcomes of college majors.

This paper estimates the wage returns to schooling and actual early work experiences for young women using the NLSY surveys. We estimate a dynamic model of young women’s schooling, work, marriage and fertility decisions in order to account for the likely impacts on future wages. The results of the model without controlling for the decision process indicate a negative effect of children on earnings. Our full model explains how this occurs, demonstrating the importance of modeling these key life decisions, while controlling for unobserved ability.

Coming soon.

We investigate how easing credit constraints affects college graduates' choices in majors and migration, focusing on the impact of student loan debt. Using a rich dataset combining university, credit bureau, and other records, we examine the effects of loan reduction or "No Loan" policies at select universities on students' major choices and migration decisions. By analyzing data across different dimensions, including parental financial constraints and socioeconomic networks, we aim to provide new insights into the relationship between education financing and upward economic mobility.

Coming soon.