Working papers

Exam Luck and Human Capital Accumulation (with Catalina Franco)

Multiple-choice tests are widely used across the world to allocate education slots and select job candidates.  Albeit a seemingly innocuous feature, we provide evidence that the placement of the correct answer affects test outcomes. We leverage the random allocation of entrance exam booklets containing different answer distributions from nearly 100,000 applicants to Colombia's top public university. We find that applicants are 5% less likely to answer correctly when the correct answer is in D, the last option of the choice set. Furthermore, encountering a one SD higher share of correct answers in D (6.7 pp above the mean) in mathematics, reduces overall performance by 0.01 standard deviations and lowers the chance of admission to applicants' preferred major by 3%. Heterogeneity analyses using linked data from all higher education attendees in Colombia indicate that male applicants with a higher share of Ds in math are less likely to enroll in college altogether. Our results are driven by test-takers’ tendency to choose D less frequently than A, B and C, a pattern we also find using the worldwide PISA test and the entrance exam to Brazilian universities. Considering the lifelong implications of college access and initial field of study choice, our findings emphasize that subtle factors can exert a more significant influence than expected on test results, disproportionately affecting unlucky test takers.

Work in progress

The Infiltration of Organized Crime: Effects on Educational Outcomes  (with Andrea Bocchino)

This study investigates how rising criminal violence affects educational outcomes in Ecuador, a country increasingly impacted by transnational organized crime due to its strategic role in global cocaine trafficking. Exploiting the sharp surge in violence since 2020 and using a difference-in-differences approach, we proxy organized crime intensity through proximity to key logistical points—banana plantations and commercial ports. We find that areas closer to these smuggling hubs experienced an average increase of 15 homicides per 100,000 people and a 1.48 percentage point rise in school dropout rates among students transitioning from primary to secondary school (ages 11–14). These effects are strongest among male students and in coastal regions. Importantly, the rise in dropout rates is not explained by a decline in educational resources. Although we find no significant change in upper secondary enrollment, homicide rates among adolescents aged 15–18 increased by 2.8 per 100,000 in treated areas—highlighting the vulnerability of youth outside the education system in a context of escalating violence.

Across and Within-Household Inequality in Norway (with Aline Butikofer, Pedro Carneiro and Kjell Salvanes)