Title: The End of One Exam: Centralized Assignment Reform, Student Choice, and School Quality
Speaker: 曾睿（Rice University）
Time: 1.16 (Friday), 14:00-15:00
Venue: Gewu Building 315
Abstract:
We study revenue sharing in music streaming platforms through the This paper studies how centralized assignment rules shape student placement and school quality. We examine Mexico’s 2025 reform, which replaced exam-based assignment for non-elite schools with a two-list mechanism. Using administrative applicant data and standardized test records, we estimate school value-added as a measure of quality and build a structural model of school demand and supply. On the demand side, we model students’ school choices and estimate preference parameters under the Stability assumption. On the supply side, schools determine their quality level by trading off enrollment incentives and direct returns to quality against their associated costs. Estimates show students prefer high quality schools. Non-elite schools improve quality only in response to enrollment incentives. In contrast, elite schools respond to both enrollment incentives and direct benefits from providing higher quality. Counterfactuals show that the new system shifts high achievers to non-elite schools; however, it also increases the number of unassigned students. The new system changes school quality, with value-added falling at elite schools and rising at non-elite schools. Yet elite schools continue outperforming non-elite schools. Expanding non-elite capacity reduces unassigned students without altering these effects. This paper highlights both the equity gains and the capacity challenges of the reform.
