Explore the vast range of titles available.

This paper studies how welfare outcomes in centralized school choice depend on the assignment mechanism when participants are not fully informed. Using a survey of school choice participants in a strategic setting, we show that beliefs about admissions chances differ from rational expectations values and predict choice behavior. To quantify the welfare costs of belief errors, we estimate a model of school choice that incorporates subjective beliefs. We evaluate the equilibrium effects of switching to a strategy-proof deferred acceptance algorithm, and of improving households’ belief accuracy. We find that a switch to truthful reporting in the DA mechanism offers welfare improvements over the baseline given the belief errors we observe in the data, but that an analyst who assumed families had accurate beliefs would have reached the opposite conclusion.

This paper asks whether elite colleges help students outside of historically advantaged groups reach top positions in the economy. I combine administrative data on income and leadership teams at publicly traded firms with a regression discontinuity design based on admissions rules at elite business-focused degree programs in Chile. The 1.8 percent of college students admitted to these programs account for 41 percent of leadership positions and 39 percent of top 0.1 percent incomes. Admission raises the number of leadership positions students hold by 44 percent and their probability of attaining a top 0.1 percent income by 51 percent. However, these gains are driven by male applicants from high-tuition private high schools, with zero effects for female students or students from other school types with similar admissions test scores. Admissions effects are equal to 38 percent of the gap in rates of top attainment by gender and 54 percent of the gap by high school background for male students. A difference-in-differences analysis of the rates at which pairs of students lead the same firms suggests that peer ties formed between college classmates from similar backgrounds may play an important role in driving the observed effects.

I combine a regression discontinuity design with rich data on academic and labor market outcomes for a large sample of Florida students to estimate the returns to college admission for academically marginal students. Students with grades just above a threshold for admissions eligibility at a large public university in Florida are much more likely to attend any university than below-threshold students. The marginal admission yields earnings gains of 22% between 8 and 14 years after high school completion. These gains outstrip the costs of college attendance, and they are largest for male students and free-lunch recipients.

Rising student loan default rates and protests over debt suggest that many students make college enrollment and financing choices they regret. Policymakers have considered tying the availability of federally subsidized loans at degree programs to financial outcomes for past students. This paper considers the implementation of such a policy in Chile. We describe how loan repayment varied by degree type at baseline, the design of the loan reform, and how earnings-based loan caps change availability of loans and incentives for students and higher education institutions. We discuss the challenges facing policymakers seeking to link loan availability to earnings outcomes.

This paper estimates the effect of elite college admission on students' chances of attaining top positions in the economy, and explores the importance of peer ties as an underlying mechanism. I combine administrative data on income and the census of directors and top managers at publicly traded firms with a regression discontinuity design based on admissions rules at elite business-focused degree programs in Chile. Admission to elite programs raises the number of firm leadership positions students hold by 50% and the share with incomes in the top 0.1% of the distribution by 45%. Effects are larger for students from high-tuition private high school backgrounds and near zero for students from other backgrounds. Consistent with the hypothesis that peer ties play an important role in driving the observed effects, private high school students admitted to top universities become more likely to work in leadership roles with peers from similar backgrounds, but no more likely to work with non-peers from the same program in different cohorts or different programs in the same field.

This dissertation consists of three chapters that explore the mechanisms through which postsecondary education may drive economic growth and the ways in which investments in education at the primary and secondary levels can facilitate skill development and neighborhood change. The first chapter considers the role that elite colleges play in preparing talented students for top management positions. The second chapter focuses on a very different group of students—those whose academic qualifications place them on the margin of admission to four-year college—and asks whether expanding the supply of spots in four-year colleges to accommodate more such students would encourage educational investments with high private and public returns. The third chapter uses data from a comprehensive school construction project in a low-income urban school district to study the effects of investments in school infrastructure on residency choices, test scores, and home prices. Chapter 1 presents the first causal evidence on the role that the skills and peer ties gained at elite universities play in helping students from elite and non-elite backgrounds reach top management positions. I construct a novel dataset linking archival records for 28 cohorts of applicants to elite colleges in Chile to the census of corporate directors and executive managers at publicly traded Chilean firms. I combine this data with a regression discontinuity design based on admissions cutoffs to estimate the causal effect of elite college admission on leadership outcomes. Admission raises the number of leadership positions students hold by 50 percent, but these gains accrue only to students from elite private high schools. The larger effects for students from elite high schools could be due to complementarities between an elite social and educational background and institutional inputs like coursework. Alternatively, elite high school students may be better able to take advantage of ties formed with peers from their college cohort. To assess the importance of peer ties, I compare the rates at which pairs of students who were college peers serve on leadership teams at the same firms to rates for pairs from the same degree programs in different cohorts or different degree programs in the same cohort. I interpret results from this difference-in-differences analysis using a model of referral-based hiring in which students may inform firms about the skills of their college peers. The model yields qualitative insights tying changes in co-leadership rates for admitted students to the relative importance peer ties, as well as a simple formula for the share of the admissions effect attributable to peer referrals. Peer ties account for 80 to 100 percent of the total admissions effect for elite high school students. My results suggest that, even given transparent admissions policies, elite universities widen the gap in management outcomes between students from elite- and non-elite backgrounds because students from elite backgrounds form valuable connections with other students like themselves. Chapter 2 combines a regression discontinuity design with rich data on academic and labor market outcomes for Florida students to determine whether relaxing constraints on the supply of spots in four year colleges through reductions in admissions standards would allow students to make high-return educational investments. Students with grades just above a threshold for admissions eligibility at a large public university are much more likely to attend any university than below-threshold students. The marginal admission yields earnings gains of 22 percent between eight and fourteen years after high school completion. These gains outstrip the costs of college attendance, and are largest for male students and free lunch recipients. My findings indicate that expanding the supply of seats in four-year colleges would likely be welfare improving provided it did not reduce returns for infra-marginal students. Chapter 3, which is joint with Christopher Neilson, provides new evidence on the effect of school construction projects on home prices, academic achievement, and public school enrollment. Combining the staggered implementation of a comprehensive school construction project in a poor urban district with panel data on student test scores and neighborhoods of residence, we find that, by six years after building occupancy, school construction increases reading scores by 0.15 standard deviations relative to the year before building occupancy. School construction also raised home prices in affected neighborhoods by roughly 10 percent, and led to increased public school enrollment in zoned neighborhoods. These results suggest that investments in school infrastructure may form an important part of the school reform toolkit. In particular, infrastructure investments have the potential to reach students who are unlikely to opt in to choice-based reforms.

This paper studies how exclusive social groups shape upward mobility and whether inter-actions between low- and high-status peers can integrate the top rungs of the economic and social ladders. Our setting is Harvard in the 1920s and 1930s, where new groups of students arriving on campus encountered a social system centered on exclusive old boys’ clubs. Combining archival and Census records, we first show that students from prestigious private feeder schools are overrepresented in old boys’ clubs, while academic high achievers and ethnic minorities are almost completely absent. Club members earn 32% more than other students and are more likely to work in finance and join country clubs, both characteristic of the era’s elite. We then use random variation in room assignment to show that exposure to high-status peers expands gaps in college club membership, adult social club membership, and finance careers by high school type, with large positive effects for private school students and zero or negative effects for others. To conclude, we turn to more recent cohorts. We show that the link between exclusive college clubs and finance careers persists across the 20th century even as Harvard diversifies, and that elite university students from the highest-income families continue to out-earn their peers.

This paper studies how exclusive social groups shape upward mobility and whether interactions between low- and high-status peers can integrate the top rungs of the economic and social ladders. Our setting is Harvard in the 1920s and 1930s, where new groups of students arriving on campus encountered a social system centered on exclusive old boys’ clubs. We combine archival and Census records of students’ college lives and careers with a room-randomization design based on a scaled residential integration policy. We first show that high-status students from prestigious private high schools perform worse academically than other students but are more likely to join exclusive campus clubs. Club members go on to earn 32% more than other students and are more likely to work in finance and join country clubs, both characteristic of the era’s elite. The membership premium persists after conditioning on high school, legacy status, and even family. Random assignment to high-status peers increases participation in exclusive college clubs, but overall effects are driven entirely by large gains for private school students. In the long run, a 50 percentile increase in residential peer group status raises the rate at which private school students work in finance by 40% and their membership in adult social clubs by 26%. We conclude that social interactions among the educational elite mediated access to top positions in the post-war United States but did not provide a path to these positions for underrepresented groups. Turning to recent cohorts, we show that while Harvard students differ from the past in their racial, ethnic, and gender composition, the path for high-status students from clubs to finance careers still exists, and elite university students from the highest-income families continue to earn more than others.

Working Paper No. 25096 This paper studies how welfare outcomes in centralized school choice depend on the assignment mechanism when participants are not fully informed. Using a survey of school choice participants in a strategic setting, we show that beliefs about admissions chances differ from rational expectations values and predict choice behavior. To quantify the welfare costs of belief errors, we estimate a model of school choice that incorporates subjective beliefs. We evaluate the equilibrium effects of switching to a strategy-proof deferred acceptance algorithm, and of improving households’ belief accuracy. Allowing for belief errors reverses the welfare comparison to favor the deferred acceptance algorithm.

Many school districts with centralized school choice adopt strategyproof assignment mechanisms to relieve applicants of the need to strategize on the basis of beliefs about their own admissions chances. This paper shows that beliefs about admissions chances shape choice outcomes even when the assignment mechanism is strategyproof by influencing the way applicants search for schools, and that “smart matching platforms” that provide live feedback on admissions chances help applicants search more effectively. Motivated by a model in which applicants engage in costly search for schools and over-optimism can lead to under-search, we use data from a large-scale survey of choice participants in Chile to show that learning about schools is hard, that beliefs about admissions chances guide the decision to stop searching, and that applicants systematically underestimate non-placement risk. We then use RCT and RD research designs to evaluate scaled live feedback policies in the Chilean and New Haven choice systems. 22% of applicants submitting applications where risks of non-placement are high respond to warnings by adding schools to their lists, reducing non-placement risk by 58% and increasing test score value added at the schools where they enroll by 0.10 standard deviations. Reducing the burden of school choice requires not just strategyproofness inside the centralized system, but also choice supports for the strategic decisions that inevitably remain outside of it.