YinYin Yu
https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/graduate-program/candidates/yinyin-yu
yinyiny@sas.upenn.edu
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Placement Director: Iourii Manovskii
Placement Director: Andrew Postlewaite
Graduate Student Coordinator: Kelly Quinn
MANOVSKI@ ECON.UPENN.EDU
APOSTLEW@ECON.UPENN.EDU
KQUINN @ ECON.UPENN.EDU
215-898-6880
215-898-7350
215-898-5691
Office Contact Information
3718 Locust Walk Rm 160
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: (410) 979-6345
Citizenship: USA
Undergraduate Studies:
BA, Economics, Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania, magna cum laude, 2010
Graduate Studies:
University of Pennsylvania, 2010 to present
Thesis Title: “The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Regulating For-Profit Colleges: A
Model of College Choice and Retention”
Expected Completion Date: May 2016
Thesis Committee and Teaching Reference:
Prof. Hanming Fang (Primary Advisor)
Department of Economics
3718 Locust Walk Rm 160, Philadelphia, PA
19104
hanming.fang@econ.upenn.edu
(215) 898-7767
Prof. Jean-Francois Houde
Wharton School of Business
1455 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall, 3620 Locust
Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104
houde@wharton.upenn.edu
(215) 573-6849
Prof. Petra Todd
Department of Economics
3718 Locust Walk Rm 160, Philadelphia, PA
19104
ptodd@econ.upenn.edu
(215) 898-4084
Prof. Eduardo Azevedo (Teaching Reference)
Wharton School of Business
1455 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall, 3620 Locust
Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104
eazevedo@wharton.upenn.edu
(215) 573-9984
Research Fields:
Education, Industrial Organization, Labor Economics, Applied Microeconomics
Teaching Experience:
Spring, 2015
Honors Managerial Economics, Wharton School of Business, University of
Pennsylvania, Recitation Instructor for Professor Eduardo Azevedo
Fall, 2014
Economic Analysis of the Public Sector (MPA), Fels Institute of Government,
University of Pennsylvania, Teaching Assistant for Professor Janice Madden
Fall, 2014
Economic Principle of Public Policy (Executive MPA), Fels Institute of
Fall, 2012
Fall, 2012
Spring, 2012
Fall, 2011
Government, University of Pennsylvania, Teaching Assistant for Professor Peter
Angelides
Topics in Development, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Jere Behrman
Law and Economics, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Camilo Garcia-Jimeno
Development Economics, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Matthias Kredler
Topics in Development, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania,
Teaching Assistant for Professor Jere Behrman
Research Experience and Other Employment:
2007-2010
Research Assistant, Department of Accounting, Wharton School of Business
2008-2010
Research Assistant, Center for International Comparisons, University of
Pennsylvania
Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships:
2010-2011
University Fellowship
Programming Languages:
MATLAB, STATA, R
Job Market Paper:
“The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Regulating For-Profit Colleges: A Model of College
Choice and Retention”
For-profit colleges have experienced significant growth over the past decade relative to other types
of colleges, but they have also been the subject of criticisms over their significant reliance on federal
student financial aid and considerable federal student loan default rates. In response to these criticisms,
the Obama administration has recently proposed to regulate for-profit colleges by restricting their access
to federal student financial aid. In this paper, I evaluate the effect of this regulation on students' college
enrollment and dropout behavior. To that end, I develop and structurally estimate a novel two-period
discrete choice model of differentiated products in which individuals make college choice decisions in the
first period and dropout decisions in the second period. Counterfactual experiments show that the
proposed regulation would be very effective in steering students away from for-profit colleges, as
intended by policy makers, but 74% of those who sort out of for-profit colleges would rather forgo
college altogether than substitute to for-profit colleges' main competitors, the community colleges. As
such, this regulation would induce a significant drop in college enrollment rate. Furthermore, for those
who do switch to community colleges, on average their dropout probability would increase by 24
percentage points due to mismatch. My results indicate that for-profit colleges are actually serving a
niche student population that does not find community colleges to be a reasonable alternative; preference
estimates point to several areas in which community colleges can improve in order to appeal to a wider
spectrum of prospective students.