Perceived Ability and School Choices: Experimental Evidence and Scale-up Effects

Matteo Bobba, Veronica Frisancho and Marco Pariguana

No 16-660, TSE Working Papers from Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)

Abstract: This paper explores an information intervention designed and implemented within a school assignment mechanism in Mexico City. Through a randomized experiment, we show that providing a subset of applicants with feedback about their academic performance can enhance sorting by skill across high school tracks. We embed the experimental variation into an empirical model of schooling choice and outcomes to assess the impact of the intervention for the overall population of applicants. Feedback provision is shown to increase the eciency of the student-school allocation, while congestion externalities are detrimental for the equity of downstream education outcomes.

Keywords: Information; Subjective expectations; Beliefs updating; Biased beliefs; School choice; Discrete choice models; Control function; Stable matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 I21 I24 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06, Revised 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-edu, nep-ger, nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Perceived Ability and School Choices: Experimental Evidence and Scale-up Effects (2026)
Working Paper: Perceived Ability and School Choices: Experimental Evidence and Scale-up Effects (2025)
Working Paper: Perceived Ability and School Choices: Experimental Evidence and Scale-up Effects (2024)
Working Paper: Perceived Ability and School Choices: Experimental Evidence and Scale-up Effects (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tse:wpaper:30494

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