Education has been considered by political economy and political science literature one of the most important factors explaining political participation: voter turnout, civic engagement, political knowledge, and democratic attitudes. However, only few papers have explored the causal link with...

Does limited access to credit explain some of the gap in schooling attainment between children from richer and poorer families? I present new evidence on this important question using data from two loan programs for college students in Chile. Both programs offer loans to students who score above...

In this paper we estimate the marriage market returns to being admitted to a higher ranked (i.e. more 'elite') university by exploiting unique features of the Chilean university admission system. This system centrally allocates applicants based on their university entrance test score, which...

To estimate causal effects of college choice, we exploit eligibility rules for student loans in a regression discontinuity design. Loan programs induce students to pursue college degrees that are more expensive and prolonged relative to technical education. Although higher education is...

Students scoring above a given threshold in the college admission test are eligible for education loans in Chile. Given the random variation in college enrollment induced by this cutoff rule, we use a regression discontinuity design to identify the marginal returns of vocational education versus...