Market power and price discrimination in the US market for higher education
利用全国数据估计私立与公立大学的竞争模型，区分反映有效定价和滥用市场势力的学费差异，发现市场势力在质量层级和学生特征间存在显著差异。
Abstract We estimate an equilibrium model of private and state college competition that generates realistic pricing patterns for private colleges using a large national data set from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). Our analysis distinguishes between tuition variation that reflects efficient pricing to students who generate beneficial peer externalities and variation that reflects arguably inefficient exercise of market power. Our findings indicate substantial exercise of market power and, importantly, sizable variation in this power along the college quality hierarchy and among students with different characteristics. Finally, we conduct policy analysis to examine the consequences of increased availability of quality public colleges in a state.