Regression Discontinuity in Serial Dictatorship: Achievement Effects at Chicago's Exam Schools

Atila Abdulkadroǧlu, Joshua Angrist, Yusuke Narita (), Parag Pathak and Roman A. Zarate

American Economic Review, 2017, vol. 107, issue 5, 240-45

Abstract: Many school and college admission systems use centralized mechanisms to allocate seats based on applicant preferences and school priorities. When tie-breaking uses non-randomly assigned criteria like distance or a test score, applicants with the same preferences and priorities are not directly comparable. The non-lottery setting does generate a kind of local random assignment that opens the door to regression discontinuity designs. This paper introduces a hybrid RD/propensity score empirical strategy that exploits quasi-experiments embedded in serial dictatorship, a mechanism widely used for college and selective K-12 school admissions. We use our approach to estimate achievement effects of Chicago's exam schools.

JEL-codes: C78 D44 D82 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20171111
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20171111 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... VnLOhLCw3ZAplSJ95m8t (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... XsRSiSXHV8PpytpIGn-l (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:107:y:2017:i:5:p:240-45

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().