Do second chances pay off? Evidence from a natural experiment with low-achieving students

Aspasia Bizopoulou, Rigissa Megalokonomou and Ştefania Simion

Journal of Public Economics, 2024, vol. 239, issue C

Abstract: In several countries, students who fail high-stakes exams at the end of high school are faced with the choice of retaking or forgoing postsecondary education. We explore exogenous variation generated by a policy that imposed a performance threshold for admission into postsecondary education in Greece to estimate the effect of retaking exams on the exam performance and various measures of the quality of received offers. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and novel administrative data, we find that low-achieving students who retake national exams improve their performance by around 0.6 standard deviation. We also find that they obtain higher quality postsecondary offers, thanks to improved performance and more ambitious re-application choices.

Keywords: Postsecondary education admission,; Low-achieving students,; Exogenous policy,; Fuzzy regression discontinuity design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:239:y:2024:i:c:s0047272724001506

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105214

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