In this paper, I provide an economic perspective on policy issues related to student debt in the United States. I lay out the economic rationale for government provision of student loans, summarize time trends in student borrowing, describe the US loan market, then turn to topics central to the...

High-achieving, low-income students attend selective colleges at far lower rates than upper-income students with similar achievement. Behavioral biases, intensified by complexity and uncertainty in the admissions and aid process, may explain this gap. In a large-scale experiment we test an early...

We ask why so few student loan borrowers enroll in Income Driven Repayment when the majority would benefit from doing so. To do so we run an incentivized laboratory experiment using a facsimile of the government's Student Loan Exit Counseling website. We test the role information complexity,...

This paper examines the impacts of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC), a statewide college-preparatory curriculum that applies to the high school graduating class of 2008 and later. We use a student, longitudinal database for all public school students in Michigan for the main analyses, and...

There is wide agreement the US student loan system faces significant problems. Seven million borrowers are in default and many more experience non-repayment. The stress of repayments faced by many students results at least in part from the design of US student loans. Specifically, loans are...

We ask why so few student loan borrowers enroll in Income Driven Repayment when the majority would benefit from doing so. To do so we run an incentivized laboratory experiment using a facsimile of the government's Student Loan Exit Counseling website. We test the role information complexity,...