This paper designs and implements a field experiment that provides students from less advantaged backgrounds with individualized feedback on academic performance during the transition from middle to high school. The intervention reduces the gap between expected and actual performance, as well as...

This paper documents disparities in cognitive development-as measured by a receptive vocabulary test-between children from households with high and low socioeconomic status (SES) in two different phases of childhood (before and after early school years) in four developing countries: Peru,...

This paper shows that returns to education are not enough to capture all the returns to human capital. Using longitudinal data of all college graduates in Colombia, we estimate labor market returns to postsecondary degrees and to various skillsincluding literacy, numeracy, foreign language,...

This study examines the gendered effects of early and sustained exposure to high-performing peers on female educational trajectories. Exploiting random allocation to classrooms within middle schools, we measure the effect of male and female high performers on girls' high school placement...

Diversity in gender identity and sexual orientation challenges traditional institutions, social norms, and gendered stereotypes. This may translate into greater levels of conflict in s ociety. Using data from 95 middle and high schools in Uruguay, we exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the...

This paper provides some evidence that repeat taking of competitive examsmay reduce the impact of background disadvantages on educational outcomes. Using administrative data on the university entrance exam in Turkey, the paper estimates cumulative learning between the first and the nth attempt...

We analyze mismatches between local labor markets and higher education enrollments in 22 educational fields across 137 mesoregions in Brazil between 2009 and 2016 using a two-stage regression model. Local labor markets have a significant effect on enrollment rates by field in higher education...

To contribute to the debate about the reorganization of the public-school supply, in this paper we analyze a reform introduced in Colombia in 2001 that merged several independent small schools into a single educational institution, with the same name, administration, educational project and...

This paper estimates the effects of school accountability on year-to-year teacher mobility in Chile. An accountability program was introduced between 2012 and 2015, which established sanctions for persistently low-performing schools, including the threat of closure if they failed to improve...

This paper explores rank-ordered teacher candidates' preferences for public schools in Peru by analyzing the 2015 teacher hiring process. Our analysis shows that, in seeking permanent positions in public schools, candidates appear to search closer to where they attended their Teacher Education...