Research
Research
Working Papers
"The End of One Exam: Centralized Assignment Reform, Student Choices, and School Quality," with Victor Delgado and Jintao Sun.
[Job Market Paper] Draft Coming Soon
Abstact: This paper studies how the design of centralized assignment rules shapes both student allocation and school quality. We examine this question in the context of the 2025 reform in Mexico City and its metropolitan area, which eliminated exam-based assignments for non-elite schools administered by the Comisión Metropolitana de Instituciones Públicas de Educación Media Superior (COMIPEMS). We assemble administrative applicant-level data to capture demand, and standardized test archives to construct a school quality measure. We then develop a structural model of demand and supply within the assignment mechanism. On the demand side, we impose the Stability assumption on the observed matching for precise estimates of student preferences. On the supply side, schools choose quality to balance enrollment incentives against the cost of maintaining quality. Estimates show that elite schools are most attractive on average. Schools raise quality when enrollment increases. While elite schools maintain a certain level of quality independent of demand pressure, non-elite schools change quality only when enrollment is responsive. Counterfactual reveals that the 2025 reform shifts a share of high-achieving students toward non-elite schools but reduces overall enrollment. Elite schools lower quality as demand pressure weakens, whereas non-elite schools improve quality as a response to stronger cohorts. This paper highlights both the equity gains and the capacity challenges of the reform.
"An Evaluation of the Alief Independent School District Jump Start Program: Using a Model to Recover Mechanisms from an RCT,'' with Flávio Cunha, Qinyou Hu, Andrea Salvati, and Kenneth I. Wolpin [NBER WP \#33537].
Second Round Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Political Economy
Abstract: This paper evaluates the Jumpstart Program (JSP), a parenting intervention implemented by a school district in the Houston area to enhance school readiness among economically disadvantaged three-year-old children. Unlike many early childhood programs typically tested in controlled research settings, JSP leverages existing school district resources for scalability and practical application. We conducted a three-year randomized controlled trial to measure the program’s impact on child cognitive outcomes, parental engagement, and mechanisms of change. The results indicate improvements in children’s performance on curriculum-aligned assessments and modest gains in general cognitive readiness as measured by the Bracken School Readiness Assessment. Furthermore, treatment group parents demonstrated increased reading frequency with their children, underscoring enhanced parental involvement as a crucial mechanism behind the program’s success. We employed a structural model to analyze both the direct effects of JSP and its indirect effects through changes in the marginal productivity of investments or preferences via habit formation. Our analysis concludes that 75% of the program’s impact is attributed to direct effects, while 25% is mediated through changes in habit formation in parental investments. Our research underscores the potential of scalable, real-world interventions to bridge socio-economic gaps in early childhood development and inform the design of effective educational policies.
"Spatial Inequality and High School Choice: Implications from Mexico City," with Victor Delgado and Jintao Sun.
Abstact: The uneven spatial distribution of schools hinders high-achieving students, particularly the socioeconomically disadvantaged, from accessing elite educational resources because of long commutes and associated costs. We study this problem within the context of COMIPEMS, a centralized system of public high school admissions in Mexico City’s metropolitan area. We estimate student preferences by assuming that the observed matching is stable in the equilibrium. Our preference estimates show that students face a quality-proximity trade-off which is heterogeneous by program track (academic versus non-academic). Counterfactual distance-based subsidies would significantly increase high-achieving students’ admission to elite programs, especially in the academic track. In contrast, prioritization policies alone have negligible effects on assignment outcomes without addressing the demand side or locations of supply. Our findings call for increasing the supply of elite programs in remote places within this centralized assignment system.
Work in Progress
"The Cost of Education: Examining How Tuition Fees Shape Students' Choice in University Admissions," with Georgy Artemov, Yeon-Koo Che, and YingHua He.
"School Choice with Latent Accessibility Constraints: Insights from Mexico City,'' with Victor Delgado and Jintao Sun.
"Is Universal Scholarship Good for Everyone? The Role of Cash Transfers on School Choice," with Victor Delgado and Jiewen Luo.
"Examining the Impact of Housing Vouchers on Educational Choices,'' with Jeremy Fiel, Hojung Lee, Jiaxin Li, and Anna Rhodes.
"The Causal Effects of Housing Vouchers on Educational Outcomes in a Unique Legal Environment: Evidence from Texas," with Jeremy Fiel, Hojung Lee, Jiaxin Li, and Anna Rhodes.
"On The Measurement of Investments: Adult-Child Verbal Interactions" with Flávio Cunha, Qinyou Hu, and Kenneth I. Wolpin.
"Coordinated Admissions for Early Childhood: Evidence from New Orleans," with Douglas Harris.