Since Georgia unveiled its HOPE Scholarship in 1993, at least 15 other states have implemented or proposed merit-aid programs based on the HOPE model. A common justification for these actions is to promote and reward academic achievement, thereby inducing greater investments in human capital....

Students are admitted into higher education based on their past performance. This paper compares two measures of past cognitive skills: teacher and national exam scores. By using a nationwide dataset, we look at how the predictive power of teacher assessment and exam scores for selecting...