• The equity and efficiency effects of a relative GPA reward in college admissions

Job Market Paper

Many college admissions systems use a combination of GPA and standardized test scores to determine access to more selective programs. In this paper, I study the impacts of a 2013 reform in the Chilean admission system that sought to increase equity by introducing a third component, based on a student’s GPA relative to the historical average at their high school. Simulating the admission mechanism with and without the relative GPA boost, I classify applicants into three groups: (i) those who gained access to more selective programs (pulled-up), (ii) those who lost access to more selective programs (pushed-down), and (iii) those whose admission was unaffected. Applying the same procedure in earlier years, I identify the same groups, facilitating a difference-in-differences design to estimate the impacts of the 2013 reform on enrollment, persistence, and graduation. Pulled-up students were able to persist in their newly accessed programs, resulting in more selective degree attainment with no effect on overall BA completion. Pushed-down students, who tended to come from better-educated/higher-income families, experienced comparable-sized reductions in the probability of graduating from selective programs, offset by gains in graduation from less selective programs. I conclude that the reform improved equity with little or no loss in efficiency.

• The impact of grade retention on juvenile crime
  with Juan Diaz, Nicolás Grau, and Jorge Rivera
  Economics of Education Review, 2021, 84, 102-153 [ungated]

This paper studies the causal effect of grade retention in primary school on juvenile crime in Chile. Implementing a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we find that repeating an early grade in primary school decreases the probability of committing a crime as a juvenile by 14.5 percentage points. By estimating and simulating a dynamic model, we show that the RD result is mainly driven by two mechanisms related to the timing of grade retention. First, grade retention in early grades decreases the probability of grade retention in late primary school grades. Second, late grade retention in primary education has a positive and more relevant effect on crime than the direct effect in early grades. Our findings support the argument that, conditional on the decision to keep grade retention as an ongoing policy, the optimal implementation at the margin is to retain students in early grades in order to avoid retention in later ones.

• Gender Bias in College Admissions Based on Test Scores: Evidence and Policy Recommendations
  with Matías Grau, Nicolás Grau, and Damian Vergara

This paper uses standard tools from the discrimination literature to estimate gender bias in college admissions based on standardized test scores in the context of the Chilean centralized admission system. If test scores have a differential predictive ability by gender, then effective selection thresholds may be gender-specific, resulting in gender gaps in college admissions for “equally qualified” applicants. We find that marginally enrolled female applicants have higher first-year grades and are more likely to remain in the programs and graduate on time, relative to marginally enrolled male applicants. Through the lens of an outcome test model, we translate differences in outcomes to differences in selection thresholds. Approximately 10% of enrolled male students would not have been admitted to their programs under the female effective selection thresholds. A counterfactual exercise that simulates the college assignment algorithm with gender-targeted test-score inflation to adjust for the estimated bias suggests that such policy would induce 1% of female applicants to gain access to college, and 2% to be accepted on a more preferred option relative to the observed assignment.