How much do students benefit from student loan subsidies? We investigate this question, exploiting a natural experiment: a demand shock due to the 2011 tightening of credit standards in the PLUS program. We first establish that the Bennett hypothesis is best explained by colleges charging large markups over their marginal costs, rather than by advantageous selection. Then we use our results to estimate that students plausibly capture less than 60 cents of each dollar of resources expended on loan subsidies. We discuss alternative approaches that would more directly benefit students.

中文翻译：

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学生贷款补贴的发生率：来自 PLUS 计划的证据

学生从学生贷款补贴中受益多少？我们利用一个自然实验来调查这个问题：由于 2011 年 PLUS 计划中信贷标准收紧而导致的需求冲击。我们首先确定，Bennett 假设最好的解释是大学收取比其边际成本高的费用，而不是有利的选择。然后，我们使用我们的结果估计，学生在贷款补贴上花费的每一美元资源中获得的资源似乎不到 60 美分。我们讨论可以更直接地使学生受益的替代方法。