Decentralizing university admission: Evidence from a natural experiment

Julia Horstschräer

No 12-076, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Applying a differences-in-differences strategy, I study the decentralization of university admission as a natural experiment. Is the centralized or decentralized procedure better suited to match prospective students to universities? The analysis uses administrative data on all students within Germany and complements the prominent theoretical literature on college admission. The results show that the matching efficiency increased in course of the decentralization. This increase is mainly driven by enabling law schools to abolish admission restrictions. The matching quality is not significantly affected by the decentralization process but suggests that abolishing admission restrictions could be associated with increasing drop-out rates.

Keywords: higher education; college admission problem; university admission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 I21 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:12076

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