In this paper, I use a unique empirical setting that allows me to compare the performance of teachers hired in a discretionary process led by the teachers’ union in Mexico with the performance of those hired on the basis ...

In this paper, we study how parents react to a widely-used school policy that puts some children at a learning disadvantage. Specifically, we first document that, in line with findings in other countries, younger children ...

I use detailed applications data to document a case in which, contrary to prevailing concerns, increasing school stratification by ability co-existed with stable stratification by family income: Mexico City public high ...

We exploit data on the future earnings students at high school completion expect to receive with and without a college education, together with information on learning achievement and college outcomes, to study the benefits ...

This paper documents a novel stylized fact: many teachers in Latin America have very low levels of cognitive skills. This skills deficit is the result of both low levels of competencies among the population and a gap between ...

This paper studies the effect of a civil service reform on the skills profile of new teachers in Mexico. The reform mandated the use of rule-based recruitment over discretionary hiring. Our results show that the reform ...

This paper studies the impact of high dismissal protection on bureaucratic turnover and productivity in the context of public school teachers in Chile. We take advantage of a law that required education administrators ...

Although longer school days are in increasing supply, a lack of consensus about their effectiveness persists. Motivated by this gap, this paper studies the effect of enrolling in a new set of full-time secondary schools ...

El cierre sin precedentes de las escuelas en casi todos los países y el efecto de la pandemia del COVID-19 en los ingresos y el bienestar de las familias han afectado negativamente los aprendizajes y la trayectoria educativa ...

This paper studies how the admission of a student to an elite school changes the schooling outcomes of younger cohorts in the student’s origin school in Peru. Using a sharp regression discontinuity design, the analysis ...