We examine the differences in an index of standardized test performance of urban private/public school seniors by race, using a sample of 4,172 students from the 1992 U.S. National Education Longitudinal Survey. In addition to using 257 exogenous variables to control for individual traits,...

I show that parents select schools by considering attributes of the student-school match that improve the learning outcomes beyond average school quality. Using the centralized algorithm for offers to primary school in London, I compare the achievement of students who are as good as randomly...

Pop-Eleches and Urquiola (2013) apply a regression discontinuity to the Romanian secondary school system, and notably find that (a) students who go to a better school get higher scores on an exam used for university admission, (b) parents of students who get into a better school help their kids...

We partner with Ecuador's government to implement a centralized school choice system using a Deferred Acceptance algorithm in Manta. Our study evaluates the welfare impact of transitioning from a distance-based assignment system to one that incorporates families' preferences. Results show that...

Though the use of tracking policies to stratify students is commonplace, evi- dence concerning the effects of ability-based tracking on student performance is mixed. Using rich data from the Hungarian secondary school centralized assignment mechanism and a quasi-experimental framework, we find...

We study a mechanism that gives students the option of paying higher tuition to attend their preferred schools. This seat‐purchasing mechanism is neither strategyproof nor stable. Our paper combines administrative and survey data to estimate students' preferences and conducts welfare analysis....

Educational tracking-separating students into tracks or schools by ability-is commonplace, but access and preferences for top programs often depend on socioeconomic status (SES), reinforcing inequality. We study shadow education in the context of an early-tracking system, exploiting score...

Despite its efficiency in tailoring education to the needs of students, a tracking system has the inherent problem of misallocating students to tracks because of incomplete information at the time of the tracking decision. This paper investigates the effects of attending a more advanced track in...

Previous research shows that, in tracked school systems, enrollment decisions are strongly associated with future outcomes both in education and on the labour market. Yet few studies explicitly investigate whether students (and their parents) have all the relevant information they need to make...