Seminarios

Presenta:  Cristián Sánchez (Ph.D. in Economics, University of Maryland at College Park; Profesor Asistente, ITAM, México)

Título:  "Skipping your Exam? The Unexpected Response to a Targeted Voucher Policy"

Lugar y hora:  8 de enero, 12:30 hrs. Sala P-301, Edificio Placa (Diagonal Paraguay 257)

I use rich administrative data from Chile and a diff-in-diff strategy to show that the positive effects on test scores of a recent targeted voucher reform found in the literature need to be taken with caution, as I find that the reform significantly decreased the likelihood that low-performing students take the national standardized tests. Specifically, low-performing students are 14.7 percentage points less likely to take the national exams four years after the introduction of the reform, while high-performing students are as likely to take the exams after the introduction of the reform as they were before. Such result cannot be explained by the observed increase in class attendance attributed to the program, but rather suggests a strategic response from schools to the requirement of constantly increasing performance in order to secure the receipt of the new subsidy. The ultimate consequence of this strategic behavior is that the resulting observed distribution of standardized test scores, an instrument that is used by the government to guide many of its policies, and by families to guide their enrollment decisions, may no longer be an accurate representation of the actual distribution, leading to inefficiencies in the allocation of resources.