Section · Publications
Research
Papers & Work in Progress
Published articles, conditionally accepted work, R&Rs, working papers, and ongoing projects on education markets, school choice, and human capital.
Published Articles
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Targeted Vouchers, Competition Among Schools and the Academic Achievement of Poor Students @article{ targeted-vouchers_2026, title = {Targeted Vouchers, Competition Among Schools and the Academic Achievement of Poor Students}, author = {Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {Econometrica}, year = {2026}, note = {Forthcoming}, abstract = {I develop a model of supply and demand with imperfect competition to study the primary education market in Chile. I use this framework to analyze how voucher policy affects incentives for schools to supply quality. First, I provide evidence that introducing a voucher targeted at poorer students led schools to improve quality. Next, I estimate demand and use the estimates to quantify the mechanisms that incentivized for-profit schools to improve. My estimates indicate that under a flat voucher system, schools leverage market power to reduce quality below the competitive benchmark, particularly in the poorest neighborhoods where competitive incentives are weakest. My results indicate the introduction of a targeted voucher policy reduced schools' market power and increased marginal revenue, improving observed school quality. These findings provide evidence that targeted vouchers enhanced academic achievement and equity by increasing resources for schools and intensifying competition where it was previously lacking.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Neilson_JMP/Neilson_SEPVouchers_April_2025.pdf} } -
Teacher Compensation and Structural Inequality: Evidence from Centralized Teacher School Choice in Peru @article{ teacherschoolchoice_2026, title = {Teacher Compensation and Structural Inequality: Evidence from Centralized Teacher School Choice in Peru}, author = {Bobba, Matteo and Ederer, Tim and León-Ciliotta, Gianmarco and Neilson, Christopher A. and Nieddu, Marco}, journal = {Journal of Political Economy}, year = {2026}, note = {Forthcoming}, doi = {10.3386/w29068}, abstract = {This paper studies how increasing teacher compensation at hard-to-staff schools can reduce inequality in the access to high-quality teachers. We first document dramatic inequities in schooling inputs and teacher quality to which students have access in the context of Peru, a large and culturally diverse developing country. We then leverage a change in teacher compensation to show causal evidence that increasing salaries at less desirable public schools attracts better quality applicants and improves subsequent student test scores. We finally estimate a model of teacher preferences over local community amenities, school characteristics and wages using detailed job posting and application data from the country-wide centralized teacher assignment system. The fitted model is able to replicate the main features in the data, including the sorting patterns of teachers around the policy change in teacher wages. Model estimates indicate that while current pay bonuses in less desirable regions are helpful, the current policy is woefully insufficient to compensate teachers for the lack of school and community amenities, especially in school vacancies that are distant to the teachers home town or the location of their current job. Counterfactual experiments taking into account equilibrium sorting show that budget-neutral changes in the current wage schedule can achieve a remarkably more equitable distribution of teacher quality across regions.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/TeacherSchoolChoice/BELNN_2024.pdf}, url_article = {https://www.nber.org/papers/w29068} } -
Elite Universities and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human and Social Capital @article{ elite-universities-transmission_2026, title = {Elite Universities and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human and Social Capital}, author = {Barrios-Fernández, Andrés and Neilson, Christopher A. and Zimmerman, Seth}, journal = {American Economic Review, Vol. 116, No. 6, June 2026, (pp. 2120-65)}, year = {2026}, doi = {10.1257/aer.20230802}, abstract = {Do elite colleges help talented students from modest backgrounds join the social elite, or help incumbent elites retain their positions? We combine five decades of data on parents and children in Chile with a regression discontinuity design to show that, in the long run, elite colleges in fact do both. When lower-status individuals gain admission to elite college degree programs, they transform their children's social environment. Children become 21\% more likely to attend high-status private schools and 8\% more likely to attend an elite college. They live near and are more likely to befriend high-status peers. In contrast, parent elite admission does not improve children's academic performance in high school or on college admissions exams. Parents' social and marriage-market exposure to high-status peers, rather than high-achieving peers, are key mediators of effects for children. Simulations combining descriptive and quasi-experimental results highlight how elite colleges simultaneously tighten the link between social capital and human capital and increase the persistence of elite social capital across generations. Plausible shifts in admission policies can produce substantial movement along this mobility-meritocracy frontier.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Elite_Intergenerational/igt_hcsc.pdf}, url_article = {https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20230802} } -
Generative Artificial Intelligence in Schools: Institutional Readiness and Digital Competencies in ICILS 2023 @article{neilson2025inteligencia, title={La inteligencia artificial generativa en centros educativos: preparaci{\'o}n institucional y competencias digitales en ICILS 2023}, author={Neilson, Christopher and Lepe, Ignacio}, journal={Papeles de Economía Española}, number={184}, pages={265--317}, year={2025}, publisher={Fundaci{\'o}n de las Cajas de Ahorros}, url={https://www.funcas.es/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/PEE_184_Neilson_Lepe.pdf} } -
Lights, Camera, School: Information Provision through Television during COVID-19 Times @article{ dfm-lights-camara_2025, title = {Lights, Camera, School: Information Provision through Television during COVID-19 Times}, author = {Gallego, Francisco A. and Molina, Oswaldo and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {Journal of Development Economics (March 2025)}, year = {2025}, doi = {10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103504}, abstract = {This paper examines the effects of phone calls designed to encourage viewership of the short telenovela 'Decidiendo para un Futuro Mejor' (Deciding for a Better Future, hereafter DFM) on national television during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 in Peru. DFM uses video content to highlight the benefits of education while providing concrete information on wages and financial aid opportunities for higher education. We evaluate the impact of these calls on dropout rates in 2021 through a randomized controlled trial involving over 80,000 families with high school students. Our findings indicate that the phone calls lead to a significant reducation in school dropout rates, with intention-to-treat (ITT) effects of approximately -0.6 percentage points- a meaningful impact given the 10.2\% average dropout rate in the control group. The effects are stronger for students from schools with higher baseline dropout and poverty rates, with no significant differences based on parental education levels. Our results also suggest that the observed effects are primarily driven by encouragement to watch DFM rather than by the direct impact of the phone calls themselves. These findings underscore the potential of cost-effective interventions to mitigate the adverse effects of major economic shocks on educational trajectories.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/DFM/GMN_JDE_2025.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103504} } -
Report Cards: Parental Preferences, Information and School Choice in Haiti @article{ report-cards-haiti_2024, title = {Report Cards: Parental Preferences, Information and School Choice in Haiti}, author = {Borger, Michael and Elacqua, Gregory and Jacas, Isabel and Neilson, Christopher A. and Olsen, Anne Sofie Westh}, journal = {Economics of Education Review (October 2024)}, year = {2024}, doi = {10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102560}, abstract = {This paper studies school choice and information frictions in Haiti. Through a randomized control trial, we assess the impact of disclosing school-level test score information on learning outcomes, prices, and market shares. We find evidence that in markets where information was disclosed, students attending private schools increased test scores. The results also suggest private schools with higher baseline test scores increased their market share as well as their fees when the disclosure policy is implemented. While prices and test scores were not significantly correlated in the baseline survey, they exhibited a significant and positive correlation in treatment markets after information disclosure. These results underscore the potential of information provision to enhance market efficiency and improve children’s welfare in context such as Haiti.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/ReportCardsHaiti/Haiti_Report_Cards.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102560} } -
Aftermarket Frictions and the Cost of Off-Platform Options in Centralized Assignment Mechanisms @article{ platforms_2024, title = {Aftermarket Frictions and the Cost of Off-Platform Options in Centralized Assignment Mechanisms}, author = {Kapor, Adam and Karnani, Mohit and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {Journal of Political Economy (July 2024)}, year = {2024}, doi = {10.1086/729068}, abstract = {We study the welfare and human capital impacts of colleges' (non)participation in Chile's centralized higher-education platform, leveraging administrative data and two policy changes: the introduction of a large scholarship program and the inclusion of additional institutions, which raised the number of on-platform slots by approximately 40\%. We first show that the expansion of the platform raised on-time graduation rates. We then develop and estimate a model of college applications, offers, wait lists, matriculation, and graduation. When the platform expands, welfare increases, and welfare, enrollment, and graduation rates are less sensitive to off-platform frictions. Gains are larger for students from lower-socioeconomic-status backgrounds.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Platforms/platform_externalities.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1086/729068} }
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Smart Matching Platforms and Heterogeneous Beliefs in Centralized School Choice @article{ warnings-platforms_2022, title = {Smart Matching Platforms and Heterogeneous Beliefs in Centralized School Choice}, author = {Arteaga, Felipe and Kapor, Adam and Neilson, Christopher A. and Zimmerman, Seth}, journal = {The Quarterly Journal of Economics (March 2022)}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.1093/qje/qjac013}, abstract = {Many school districts with centralized school choice adopt strategyproof assignment mechanisms to relieve applicants of the need to strategize on the basis of beliefs about their own admissions chances. This paper shows that beliefs about admissions chances shape choice outcomes even when the assignment mechanism is strategyproof by influencing the way applicants search for schools, and that "smart matching platforms" that provide live feedback on admissions chances help applicants search more effectively. Motivated by a model in which applicants engage in costly search for schools and overoptimism can lead to undersearch, we use data from a large-scale survey of choice participants in Chile to show that learning about schools is hard, that beliefs about admissions chances guide the decision to stop searching, and that applicants systematically underestimate nonplacement risk. We then use RCT and RD research designs to evaluate scaled live feedback policies in the Chilean and New Haven choice systems. 22\% of applicants submitting applications where risks of nonplacement are high respond to warnings by adding schools to their lists, reducing nonplacement risk by 58\% and increasing test score value added at the schools where they enroll by 0.10 standard deviations. Reducing the burden of school choice requires not just strategyproofness inside the centralized system, but also choice supports for the strategic decisions that inevitably remain outside of it.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Warnings/qjac013.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjac013} } -
Centralized School Choice with Unequal Outside Options @article{ school-choice-outside-options_2022, title = {Centralized School Choice with Unequal Outside Options}, author = {Akbarpour, Mohammad and Kapor, Adam and Neilson, Christopher A. and van Dijk, Winnie and Zimmerman, Seth}, journal = {Journal of Public Economics (June 2022)}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104644}, abstract = {This paper introduces a simple school choice model in which all students have the same ordinal preferences over schools but only some have access to an outside option. Our model predicts that, under a manipulable school choice mechanism, students with the outside option are more likely to apply to popular schools. We show that while students with the outside option benefit from manipulable systems, students without the outside option may experience either welfare gains or welfare losses. We evaluate the positive predictions of the model using a difference-in-differences design that leverages a change from the Boston mechanism to a deferred acceptance mechanism in the New Haven, Connecticut school district. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, students with an outside option are more likely to list popular, highly-rated schools under the manipulable mechanism, but this gap disappears after the switch to the deferred acceptance mechanism.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/ChoiceUnequalOO/Akbarpour_et_al_(2022)_JPubE.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104644} } -
Small Firms and the Pandemic: Evidence From Latin America @article{ covid-sbs-latam_2022, title = {Small Firms and the Pandemic: Evidence From Latin America}, author = {Guerrero, Maria Elena and Humphries, John Eric and Neilson, Christopher A. and Shimberg, Naomi and Ulyssea, Gabriel}, journal = {Journal of Development Economics (March 2022)}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102775}, abstract = {This paper studies the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on small businesses using new daily survey data on 35,000 small businesses in eight Latin American countries. The shock had large negative impacts on employment and beliefs regarding the future, which in turn predict meaningful economic outcomes in the medium-term. Despite the unprecedented amount of aid available to small businesses, policy reach has been limited and frictions related to design and implementation screened out small firms and informal firms. These frictions may have lasting consequences, as businesses that received aid reported better outcomes and expectations about the future.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/covid19_sbs_Latam/GHNSU_Latam_June_2021.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102775} }
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O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers on College and Major Choice in Four Countries @article{ siblingsspillovers_2021, title = {O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers on College and Major Choice in Four Countries}, author = {Altmejd, Adam and Barrios-Fernández, Andrés and Drlje, Marin and Goodman, Joshua and Hurwitz, Michael and Kovac, Dejan and Mulhern, Christine and Neilson, Christopher A. and Smith, Jonathan}, journal = {The Quarterly Journal of Economics (August 2021)}, year = {2021}, volume = {136}, number = {3}, pages = {1831-1886}, issn = {0033-5533}, doi = {10.1093/qje/qjab006}, abstract = {Family and social networks are widely believed to influence important life decisions, but causal identification of those effects is notoriously challenging. Using data from Chile, Croatia, Sweden, and the United States, we study within-family spillovers in college and major choice across a variety of national contexts. Exploiting college-specific admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger siblings' college options, we show that in all four countries a meaningful portion of younger siblings follow their older sibling to the same college or college-major combination. Older siblings are followed regardless of whether their target and counterfactual options have large, small, or even negative differences in quality. Spillover effects disappear, however, if the older sibling drops out of college, suggesting that older siblings' college experiences matter. That siblings influence important human capital investment decisions across such varied contexts suggests that our findings are not an artifact of particular institutional detail but a more generalizable description of human behavior. Causal links between the postsecondary paths of close peers may partly explain persistent college enrollment inequalities between social groups, and this suggests that interventions to improve college access may have multiplier effects.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/SiblingSpillovers/QJE_2021_SiblingSpillovers.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjab006} }
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Heterogeneous Beliefs and School Choice Assignment Mechanisms @article{ het-beliefs-nhps_2020, title = {Heterogeneous Beliefs and School Choice Assignment Mechanisms}, author = {Kapor, Adam and Neilson, Christopher A. and Zimmerman, Seth}, journal = {American Economic Review, Vol. 110, No. 5, May 2020 (pp. 1274-1315)}, year = {2020}, doi = {10.1257/aer.20170129}, abstract = {Many school districts in the United States and abroad offer students a choice of schools, with seats at highly demanded schools apportioned using a centralized mechanism with random rationing. This paper studies how welfare and academic outcomes depend on the assignment mechanism when school choice participants are not fully informed of their admissions chances. We estimate an empirical model of school choice that incorporates heterogeneity in preferences, strategic behavior, and subjective beliefs about admissions chances. To do so, we combine survey data on beliefs and preferences for school choice participants with administrative records of the school choice process in New Haven, Connecticut. We use the estimated model to evaluate the individual and equilibrium effects of counterfactual policies such as a) improving households information about the lottery mechanism, and b) switching to the strategy-proof student-proposing deferred acceptance algorithm on the distribution of welfare and test scores. Survey results show that beliefs about admissions probabilities associated with actual and hypothetical application portfolios are correctly centered around zero but have a large mean absolute error, with larger absolute errors for families from poorer neighborhoods. Our model estimates suggest that, given households' observed strategic sophistication and beliefs about admissions chances, switching to a deferred acceptance algorithm would raise total welfare, with bigger gains for families from poorer neighborhoods.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/KNZ_1920.pdf}, url_article = {https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20170129} }
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Information Frictions and Access to the Paycheck Protection Program @article{ covid-sbs-informationfrictions_2020, title = {Information Frictions and Access to the Paycheck Protection Program}, author = {Humphries, John Eric and Neilson, Christopher A. and Ulyssea, Gabriel}, journal = {Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 190, October 2020, (pp. 104244)}, year = {2020}, doi = {10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104244}, abstract = {The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) extended 669 billion dollars of forgivable loans in an unprecedented effort to support small businesses affected by the COVID-19 crisis. This paper provides evidence that information frictions and the "first-come, first-served" design of the PPP program skewed its resources towards larger firms and may have permanently reduced its effectiveness. Using new daily survey data on small businesses in the U.S., we show that the smallest businesses were less aware of the PPP and less likely to apply. If they did apply, the smallest businesses applied later, faced longer processing times, and were less likely to have their application approved. These frictions may have mattered, as businesses that received aid report fewer layoffs, higher employment, and improved expectations about the future.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/covid19_sbs/HNU_JPubE_2020.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104244} }
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Health at Birth, Parental Investments and Academic Outcomes @article{ birth-health_2018, title = {Health at Birth, Parental Investments and Academic Outcomes}, author = {Bharadwaj, Prashant and Eberhard, Juan and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 36, No 2, April 2018, (pp. 349-394)}, year = {2018}, doi = {10.1086/695616}, abstract = {This paper explores the relationship among health at birth, academic outcomes, and the potential role of parental investments using administrative panel data from Chile. Using detailed data on parental investments, we find that investments are compensatory regarding initial health, but not across twins. Twins fixed effects models estimate a persistent effect of birth weight on academic achievement, while ordinary least squares and siblings fixed effects models find this relationship to decline over time. We view these findings in the context of a model of human capital accumulation where parental investments respond to initial endowments and spill over to siblings.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/BEN_2018/BEN_JOLE_preprint_draft.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1086/695616} } -
Grey Matters: Fetal Pollution Exposure and Human Capital Formation @article{ grey-matters_2017, title = {Grey Matters: Fetal Pollution Exposure and Human Capital Formation}, author = {Bharadwaj, Prashant and Gibson, Matthew and Graff Zivin, Joshua and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Vol. 4, No. 2, June 2017, (pp. 505-542)}, year = {2017}, doi = {10.1086/691591}, abstract = {This paper examines the impact of fetal exposure to air pollution on fourth-grade test scores in Santiago, Chile. We rely on comparisons across siblings which address concerns about locational sorting (for nonmovers) and all other time-invariant family characteristics that can lead to endogenous exposure to poor environmental quality. We also exploit data on air quality alerts to help address concerns related to short-run time-varying avoidance behavior, which has been shown to be important in a number of other contexts. We find a strong negative effect from fetal exposure to carbon monoxide (CO) and correlated pollutants (like PM10) on math and language skills measured in fourth grade. These effects are economically significant, and our back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the 50\% reduction in CO in Santiago between 1990 and 2005 increased lifetime earnings by approximately US\$100 million per birth cohort.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/BGGN_JERE_2017.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1086/691591} } -
(Un)informed College and Major Choice: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data @article{ uninformed-major-choice_2016, title = {(Un)informed College and Major Choice: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data}, author = {Hastings, Justine and Neilson, Christopher A. and Ramirez, Anely and Zimmerman, Seth}, journal = {Economics of Education Review, Access to Higher Education, Vol. 51, April 2016, (pp. 136-151)}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.06.005}, abstract = {We use large-scale surveys of Chilean college applicants and college students to explore the way students form beliefs about earnings and cost outcomes at different institutions and majors and how these beliefs relate to degree choice and persistence. Linking our survey records to administrative education and earnings data, we compare earnings and cost expectations to observed values for past students and follow survey participants forward to see how beliefs relate to matriculation and dropout outcomes. We find that students have correctly centered but noisy cost expectations, and appear to systematically overestimate earnings outcomes for past graduates. Students who overestimate costs are less likely to matriculate in any degree program and in their stated first-choice program, and are more likely to drop out. Students who overestimate earnings matriculate at similar rates to other students, but choose degree programs where past students have been less likely to graduate, have earned less early in their careers, and have been more likely to default on student loans. Consistent with an informal model of enrollment choice, students with a stated preference for labor market-related degree characteristics are less likely to overestimate earnings outcomes and choose degrees where past students have gone on to earn more, while the opposite is true for students with a stated preference for enjoyment of the curriculum.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/HNRZ_EER_2016.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.06.005} } -
The Gender Gap in Mathematics: Evidence from Chile @article{ gender-gap-math_2016, title = {The Gender Gap in Mathematics: Evidence from Chile}, author = {Bharadwaj, Prashant and De Giorgi, Giacomo and Hansen, David and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 65, No. 1, October 2016, (pp. 141-166)}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1086/687983}, abstract = {Using a large administrative data set from Chile, we find that on average boys perform better than girls in math. In this article, we document several features of boys versus girls’ relative performance in math. First, we note that the gender gap appears to increase with age (doubles between fourth grade and eighth grade). Second, we test whether commonly proposed explanations such as parental background and investments, unobserved ability, and classroom environment (including teacher gender) help explain a substantial portion of the gap. While none of these explanations help in explaining a large portion of the gender gap, we show that boys and girls differ significantly in perceptions about their own ability in math. Conditional on math scores, compared to boys, girls are much more likely to state that they dislike math or find math difficult. We highlight differences in self-assessed ability as areas for future research that might lead to a better understanding of the gender gap in math.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/BGHN_EDCC_2016.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1086/687983} } -
Connecting Student Loans to Labor Market Outcomes: Policy Lessons from Chile @article{ loans-market-outcomes_2015, title = {Connecting Student Loans to Labor Market Outcomes: Policy Lessons from Chile}, author = {Beyer, Harald and Hastings, Justine and Neilson, Christopher A. and Zimmerman, Seth}, journal = {American Economic Review: Papers \& Proceedings, Vol. 105, No. 5, May 2015 (pp. 508–513)}, year = {2015}, doi = {10.1257/aer.p20151026}, abstract = {Rising student loan default rates and protests over debt suggest that many students make college enrollment and financing choices they regret. Policymakers have considered tying the availability of federally subsidized loans at degree programs to financial outcomes for past students. This paper considers the implementation of such a policy in Chile. We describe how loan repayment varied by degree type at baseline, the design of the loan reform, and how earnings-based loan caps change availability of loans and incentives for students and higher education institutions. We discuss the challenges facing policymakers seeking to link loan availability to earnings outcomes.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/BHNZ_AER_2015.pdf}, url_article = {https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20151026} }
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The Effect of School Construction on Test Scores, School Enrollment, and Home Prices @article{ school-construction_2014, title = {The Effect of School Construction on Test Scores, School Enrollment, and Home Prices}, author = {Neilson, Christopher A. and Zimmerman, Seth}, journal = {Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 120, December 2014, (pp. 18-31)}, year = {2014}, doi = {10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.08.002}, abstract = {This paper provides new evidence on the effect of elementary and middle school construction projects on home prices, academic achievement, and school enrollment. Combining the staggered implementation of a comprehensive school construction project in a poor urban district with panel data on student test scores and neighborhoods of residence, we find that, by six years after building occupancy, school construction increases reading scores by 0.15 standard deviations relative to the year before building occupancy. We do not observe similar effects for math scores. School construction raised home prices in affected neighborhoods by roughly 10\%, and led to increased public school enrollment.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/NZ_JPubE_2014.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.08.002} }
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Early Life Health Interventions and Academic Achievement @article{ early-life_2013, title = {Early Life Health Interventions and Academic Achievement}, author = {Bharadwaj, Prashant and Løken, Katrine Vellesen and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {American Economic Review, Vol. 103, No. 5, August 2013, (pp. 1862-91)}, year = {2013}, doi = {10.1257/aer.103.5.1862}, abstract = {This paper studies the effect of improved early life health care on mortality and long-run academic achievement in school. We use the idea that medical treatments often follow rules of thumb for assigning care to patients, such as the classification of Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW), which assigns infants special care at a specific birth weight cutoff. Using detailed administrative data on schooling and birth records from Chile and Norway, we establish that children who receive extra medical care at birth have lower mortality rates and higher test scores and grades in school. These gains are in the order of 0.15-0.22 standard deviations.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/BVN_2013_AER.pdf}, url_article = {https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.103.5.1862} }
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Chile's Fiscal Rule as Social Insurance @article{ countercyclicalfiscalpolicy_2013, title = {Chile's Fiscal Rule as Social Insurance}, author = {Engel, Eduardo and Neilson, Christopher A. and Valdes, Rodrigo}, journal = {in Cespedes, L., F. and J. Gali (eds.), Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Performance (2013)}, year = {2013}, abstract = {In this paper, we explore from a normative perspective the contours of an optimal spending rule for a government that has volatile revenues from an exogenous source such as a flow from a natural resource, very much like Chile. Specifically, we analyze policies for a government with a precautionary saving motive that decides how much to transfer from volatile copper revenues to impatient agents that differ in their private incomes, which in turn are volatile and correlated with fiscal revenues. Much as in reality, the government can save abroad, has limited space for borrowing against future revenue, and has access to an imperfect technology for targeting transfers (that is, a portion of transfers leaks to richer households). Households’ behavior is simple: they consume all available income. Output is exogenous in our model, that is, fiscal multipliers are zero, so any countercyclical action reflects the desire of increasing transfers at times when household consumption is low and government spending has a higher marginal utility, rather than a Keynesian mechanism. Fiscal policy is ultimately the implementation of social insurance. We analyze the welfare gains of an optimal rule vis-a-vis a balanced-budget rule whereby the government transfers all its revenues to households in each period. We also study the behavior of government assets and the extent to which government spending is countercyclical. We compare the optimal rule prescribed by our model with simpler rules, including the Chilean SBR, a rule that spends the permanent income from copper (a la Friedman), and linear rules similar to the SBR except that propensities to consume out of assets and structural revenues are chosen optimally. We also analyze the gains from having an escape clause.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Engel_Neilson_Valdes_Vol17_393_425.pdf} } -
Crecimiento Pro Pobre en Chile @article{ propoorgrowth_2008, title = {Crecimiento Pro Pobre en Chile}, author = {Contreras, Dante and Cooper, Ryan and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {El Trimestre Economico (2008)}, year = {2008}, doi = {10.20430/ete.v75i300.423}, abstract = {Con datos de panel para el periodo 1996-2001 y datos de corte transversal para 1990 y 2003 este artícu lo evalúa si el crecimiento en Chile ha sido "pro pobre". Se em plean dos métodos: i) se estima la "curva de incidencia del crecimiento" y luego se estima paramétrica y no paramétricamente la relación entre el ingreso per capita de los hogares en 1996 y el cambio en el ingreso de 1996-2001. Los resultados indican que el crecimiento ha incidido significativamente en la reducción de pobreza. Por otra parte, existe evidencia de convergencia para la mitad más pobre de la distribución de ingresos.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Contreras_Cooper_Neilson_2008_ETE.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.20430/ete.v75i300.423} } -
The Dynamics of Poverty in Chile @article{ povertydynamics_2008, title = {The Dynamics of Poverty in Chile}, author = {Neilson, Christopher A. and Contreras, Dante and Cooper, Ryan and Hermann, Jorge}, journal = {Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2, May 2008, (pp. 251-273)}, year = {2008}, doi = {10.1017/S0022216X08003982}, abstract = {This paper uses the 1996-2001 National Socioeconomic Survey panel database to analyze poverty dynamics in Chile, drawing a distinction between chronic and transient poverty. We found that while 20 per cent of the population was living below the official poverty line both in 1996 and 2001, only 9 per cent of the population was poor at both dates. We also found that when the poverty line was raised, the amount of households which could be considered chronically poor rose steadily, whereas the transitory component of poverty remained more or less stable. Analysis of the direct reasons for changes in household poverty status leads us to the conclusion that labour dynamics are far more relevant than demographic changes. Household heads who suffered health problems are significantly less likely to leave poverty. Household human and physical capital are also relevant, as well as the sector in which the household head works. Simulating this exercise using different poverty lines reveals that some variables are not robust to changes in the definition of poverty, while others which originally appeared to be insignificant become so for most other possible poverty lines.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Neilson_Contreras_Cooper_Herman_2008.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X08003982} } -
Solutions Manual for "Macroeconomia: Teoria y Politica" @article{ macro-solutions_2008, title = {Solutions Manual for "Macroeconomia: Teoria y Politica"}, author = {De Gregorio, José and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {Pearson Education}, year = {2008}, abstract = {This is a solutions manual that accompanies the intermediate macroeconomics textbook "Macroeconomia: Teoria y Politica" by Jose De Gregorio.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Solucionario_Macroeconomia.pdf} } -
Financial Diversification, Sudden Stops and Sudden Starts @article{ finacialdiversification_2007, title = {Financial Diversification, Sudden Stops and Sudden Starts}, author = {Cowan, Kevin and De Gregorio, José and Micco, Alejandro and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {in Cowan, K., S. Edwards, and R. Valdes (eds.), Current Account and External Finance (2007)}, year = {2007}, abstract = {The recent literature on sudden stops is based on the fact that many emerging market economies experience recurrent and sharp capital account reversals. In this paper we argue, as some recent research has started to emphasize, that more information can be obtained by looking at gross rather than net flows. Economies may be curtailed from international financial markets, resulting in a sudden stop of inflows, but others may be experiencing portfolio shifts that cause sudden start of capital outflows. By looking at gross flows, and comparing emerging markets (EMEs) with developed economies (DEs) we indeed show that there is a variety of experiences that cannot be lumped together. In particular, sudden stop of inflows are as common in DEs as in EMEs, but a key difference is that in the former outflows and inflows are negatively correlated, which dampen the reversal of net flows. We present a model of financial diversification to interpret these results which is consistent with most evidence we report here.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Cowan_Degregorio_Micco_Neilson_2007.pdf} } -
Another Pass-Through Bites the Dust? Oil Prices and Inflation @article{ anotherpassthrough_2007, title = {Another Pass-Through Bites the Dust? Oil Prices and Inflation}, author = {De Gregorio, José and Landerretche, Oscar and Neilson, Christopher A.}, journal = {Journal of LACEA (2007)}, year = {2007}, doi = {10.1353/eco.2007.0014}, abstract = {A salient feature of recent oil price hikes has been the reduced impact that they seem to have had on general price levels worldwide when compared with previous oil shocks. This paper gathers stylized facts on the evolution of the pass-through of changes in oil prices to general inflation for a broad number of countries so that this decline in the impact of oil price hikes can be quantified and various hypotheses that might explain it can be evaluated. The current surge in oil prices has also been associated with small effects on output. We find suggestive evidence that can explain both this association with output and the reduced impact on inflation. We show that a decline in the exchange rate pass-through, a reduction in the use of oil per unit of GDP, and a macroeconomic environment characterized by low inflation (which, among other things, has limited the need for reactive monetary policy) help to explain the relatively mild effects of the current oil shock on the global economy. Although we focus on the inflationary consequences of oil shocks, the factors we highlight are also consistent with the limited effects of the current oil shock on global economic activity. The casual observation that inflation is lower now in many countries compared with what it was in the 1970s and 1980s, despite increased oil prices, is not a definitive demonstration of a lower pass-through. In the first place, although nominal oil prices have recently set new records, real oil prices are not as high as they were in those earlier decades. The effects of recent oil shocks are being dampened because they have been accompanied in most countries by appreciations of the currency. Also, the high inflation of the 1970s and 1980s was not due to the oil shocks alone; macroeconomic policies then were very accommodative of inflationary shocks. The improved macroeconomic policies in many countries today may also have contributed to a smaller pass-through. Finally, oil prices are not entirely exogenous to the general equilibrium of the world economy, and the effects of an oil price increase on world inflation and output will depend on the nature of the increase, namely, whether it results from a decrease in supply or from strong demand. The main contribution of this paper is the extension of the calculation of the pass-through of oil price increases to inflation to a larger set of countries and the verification of whether the recent decrease of the pass-through is limited to the United States or whether it can be generalized to the world economy. We find that the pass-through has decreased worldwide during the last thirty years. The cross-country nature of our investigation allows us to study in greater detail the factors underlying the decline in the pass-through and mitigates the problem of endogeneity of the oil price that United States- centered studies might face}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/DeGregorioLanderretcheNeilsonECONOMIA2007.pdf}, url_article = {https://doi.org/10.1353/eco.2007.0014} }
Conditionally Accepted
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Incentives, Evidence, and Reminders for Bureaucrats: Overcoming Barriers to Policy Scale Up @unpublished{ rd-lastmileave_2026, title = {Incentives, Evidence, and Reminders for Bureaucrats: Overcoming Barriers to Policy Scale Up}, author = {Agte, Patrick and Morales, Daniel and Neilson, Christopher A. and Otero, Sebastián and Rao, Gautam}, year = {2026}, note = {Conditionally accepted, Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics}, doi = {10.3386/w35291}, abstract = {Scaling up effective policies often requires the attention of frontline bureaucrats with many competing responsibilities. In a nationwide scale-up experiment in the Dominican Republic, this paper tests whether sharing research evidence, offering incentives, providing implementation support, and sending reminders improve compliance with an evidence-based education policy.}, url = {https://www.nber.org/papers/w35291} } -
College Application Mistakes and the Design of Information Policies at Scale @unpublished{ application-mistakes_2025, title = {College Application Mistakes and the Design of Information Policies at Scale}, author = {Larroucau, Tomás and Rios, Ignacio and Fabre, Anais and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2025}, note = {Conditionally accepted, Journal of Political Economy}, doi = {10.3386/w34164}, abstract = {In this paper, we present the results of a multi-year collaboration with policy-makers to design and evaluate whether information policies implemented at scale can effectively improve students' outcomes. Using a series of nationwide surveys, we find that 40\% of students do not apply to their preferred college and major, and 10\% of these students would have strictly benefited by including these programs. Upon these results, we implemented with the Ministry of Education of Chile a large-scale field experiment for college admissions, which included personalized information about program characteristics, students' admission probabilities, and alternative major recommendations. The intervention significantly reduced application mistakes, increasing the probability of assignment for unmatched students by 20\% and the probability of improving the assignment of undermatched students by 38\%. After scaling-up the policy, the intervention approximately doubled the matching probability for unmatched and undermatched students and tripled the enrollment likelihood for initially unmatched students.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Information_Frictions_and_Application_Mistakes_LRFN_2026.pdf} }
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The Global Gender Gap in STEM Applications: Pipeline vs. Choice @unpublished{ stem-major-gender-gaps_2026, title = {The Global Gender Gap in STEM Applications: Pipeline vs. Choice}, author = {Ahimbisibwe, Isaac and Altmejd, Adam and Artemov, Georgy and Barrios-Fernández, Andrés and Bizopoulou, Aspasia and Kaila, Martti and Liu, Jin-Tan and Megalokonomou, Rigissa and Montalbán, José and Neilson, Christopher A. and Otero, Sebastián and Sun, Jintao and Ye, Xiaoyang}, year = {2026}, note = {Conditionally accepted, Economics of Education Review}, abstract = {Women make up only 35\% of STEM graduates worldwide, a share unchanged for a decade. We separate two sources of this gap: gender differences in academic preparation (the pipeline) and in application decisions (the choice gap). We use data from ten centralized university admissions systems where eligibility is set by academic performance and places are assigned through variants of deferred acceptance, so students have little incentive to misreport. We focus on high-achieving students, for whom access constraints are least likely to bind, which isolates application behavior from the most obvious barriers. The pipeline gap varies widely, from a female disadvantage in Uganda to a female advantage in Sweden, and broadly tracks labor-market gender parity. The choice gap does not. It is large and negative everywhere: even among top scorers, women are about 24 percentage points less likely than men to rank a STEM program first, and the gap exceeds 20 points in eight of the ten settings. The pattern holds when STEM is counted anywhere on the list, not only first. Closing the pipeline gap entirely would still leave high-achieving STEM applicants majority male, between 57\% and 75\%, in every setting we study.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/STEM_Gender_Gap_Pipeline_vs_Choice_2026.pdf} }
Working Papers
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Parents’ Earnings and the Returns to Universal Pre-Kindergarten @unpublished{ upk-laborsupply_2026, title = {Parents’ Earnings and the Returns to Universal Pre-Kindergarten}, author = {Humphries, John Eric and Neilson, Christopher A. and Ye, Xiaoyang and Zimmerman, Seth}, year = {2026}, note = {Revise and resubmit, Econometrica}, doi = {10.3386/w33038}, abstract = {We study the economic returns to universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) through a key (and often under-measured) channel: parents’ labor supply and earnings. Using randomized admission lotteries from New Haven’s full-day UPK program, we estimate the causal effect of UPK access on parents’ work and income over time. Parents substantially increase labor supply and earnings, and these gains persist for at least six years after the UPK year. In contrast, we find comparatively small impacts on children’s test scores. The implied benefits are large: each \$1 of net government spending generates about \$5.51 in after-tax benefits for families from earnings gains alone.}, url = {https://spinup-000d1a-wp-offload-media.s3.amazonaws.com/faculty/wp-content/uploads/sites/77/2024/12/NHPS_pre_k_NBER_main.pdf}, url_article = {https://www.nber.org/papers/w33038} } -
Search and Biased Beliefs in Education Markets @unpublished{ school-choice-search_2026, title = {Search and Biased Beliefs in Education Markets}, author = {Agte, Patrick and Allende, Claudia and Kapor, Adam and Neilson, Christopher A. and Ochoa, Fernando}, year = {2026}, note = {Revise and resubmit, Econometrica}, doi = {10.3386/w32670}, abstract = {This paper asks how search costs, limited awareness of schools, misperceptions of schools' attributes, and inaccurate beliefs over unknown schools affect families' search and application decisions in Chile's nation wide school choice process. We combine novel data on search activity with a panel of household surveys, administrative application data, randomized information experiments, and a model of demand and sequential search with subjective beliefs. Descriptively, households hold inaccurate beliefs and misperceptions along multiple dimensions which distort the perceived returns to search. Most importantly, they do not know all schools, and misperceive quality ratings of the schools they know and like. Improving the search technology would raise households' search effort and welfare. Correcting misperceptions about known schools' observables would cause students to match to schools with higher quality, equal to what can be achieved under a full-information benchmark. Models with out misperceptions would incorrectly predict quality reductions.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/w32670_july_2024.pdf} }
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Approximating The Equilibrium Effects of Informed School Choice @unpublished{ equilibrium-informed-school-choice_2019, title = {Approximating The Equilibrium Effects of Informed School Choice}, author = {Allende, Claudia and Gallego, Francisco A. and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2019}, note = {Revise and resubmit, The Review of Economic Studies}, abstract = {This paper studies the potential small and large scale effects of a policy designed to produce more informed consumers in the market for primary education. We develop and test a personalized information provision intervention that targets families of public Pre-K students entering elementary schools in Chile. Using a randomized control trial, we find that the intervention shifts parents' choices toward schools with higher average test scores, higher value added, higher prices, and schools that tend to be further from their homes. Tracking students with administrative data, we find that student academic achievement on test scores was approximately 0.2 standard deviations higher among treated families five years after the intervention. To quantitatively gauge how average treatment effects might vary in a scaled up version of this policy, we embed the randomized control trial within a structural model of school choice and competition where price and quality are chosen endogenously and schools face capacity constraints. We use the estimated model of demand and supply to simulate policy effects under different assumptions about equilibrium constraints. In counterfactual simulations, we find that capacity constraints play an important role mitigating the policy effect but in several scenarios, the supply-side response increases quality, which contributes to an overall positive average treatment effect. Finally, we show how the estimated model can inform the design of a large scale experiment such that reduced form estimates can capture equilibrium effects and spillovers.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/AllendeGallegoNeilson2019/SchoolChoiceInfoExp.pdf} } -
The Equilibrium Effects of Asymmetric Information: Evidence from Consumer Credit Markets @unpublished{ credit-info_2018, title = {The Equilibrium Effects of Asymmetric Information: Evidence from Consumer Credit Markets}, author = {Liberman, Andres and Neilson, Christopher A. and Opazo, Luis and Zimmerman, Seth}, year = {2018}, note = {Revise and resubmit, Journal of Finance}, doi = {10.3386/w25097}, abstract = {We combine machine learning techniques with a large-scale policy change to study the equilibrium effects of information asymmetries in credit markets. In 2012, Chilean credit bureaus were forced to stop reporting past defaults for 2.8 million individuals with relatively low default amounts. These individuals made up 21\% of the country's adult population and approximately 67\% of borrowers in default. Using panel data of the universe of bank borrowers in Chile and access to the deleted registry information, we measure exposure to the deletion policy by constructing cost predictions with and without the deleted data. We then estimate the effects of exposure to changes in predicted costs using a difference-in-differences design that compares changes in borrowing over time for borrowers at different points in the exposure distribution. We find that deletion reduces predicted costs the most for poorer defaulters with limited borrowing histories, and raises predicted costs the most for non-defaulters with similar backgrounds. Borrowing is negatively and monotonically related to increases in predicted costs, with an elasticity of -0.14. Losers from the policy outnumber winners, and in aggregate, the effect of deletion was a sustained reduction in borrowing by 9\% relative to baseline. We use our procedure to simulate the effects of counterfactual deletion policies such as the elimination of data on gender or additional default records, and show that both types of deletion reduce overall borrowing with largest drops for lower-income individuals and women.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Credit_GE/LNOZ_maintext.pdf}, url_article = {http://www.nber.org/papers/w25097} } -
Getting Better Students to Become Teachers: The Effects of Targeted Tuition Subsidies @unpublished{ better-students-teachers_2011, title = {Getting Better Students to Become Teachers: The Effects of Targeted Tuition Subsidies}, author = {Alvarado, Macarena and Duarte, Fabian and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2011}, note = {MINEDUC WP 2011}, abstract = {In this paper we document the effects of incentives aimed at shifting high achieving students into the teaching profession in Chile. The education system in Chile has recently resolved issues associated with coverage of schooling and has been transiting towards focusing on problems associated with the quality and equity of education provision, where teacher quality has been a major focus. The government of Chile implemented a policy in 2010 that gave full scholarships and other incentives such as stipends and travel for students who matriculate at teaching colleges with scores from the highest 30\% of the admissions test distribution. Colleges however needed to implement a cutoff score of the 50th percentile if they were to be eligible. The results of this ”carrots and sticks” policy was that the proportion of high achieving students rose by approximately 50\%, although enrollment from the lower end of the distribution continued high at non participating institutions. Using a regression discontinuity empirical design it is shown that the probability of choosing the teaching profession rose by 40\% to 200\% at different point of the distribution. The effects were found to be greater for students who were male and who came from public schools or families with lower income levels.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/WorkingPaperBVP_MINEDUC.pdf} } -
The Effect of School Choice on Intrinsic Motivation and Academic Outcomes @unpublished{ school-choice-intrinsic-motivation_2012, title = {The Effect of School Choice on Intrinsic Motivation and Academic Outcomes}, author = {Hastings, Justine and Neilson, Christopher A. and Zimmerman, Seth}, year = {2012}, note = {NBER Working Paper No. 18342}, doi = {10.3386/w18324}, abstract = {Using data on student outcomes and school choice lotteries from a low-income urban school district, we examine how school choice can affect student outcomes through increased motivation and personal effort as well as through improved school and peer inputs. First we use unique daily data on individual-level student absences and suspensions to show that lottery winners have significantly lower truancies after they learn about lottery outcomes but before they enroll in their new schools. The effects are largest for male students entering high school, whose truancy rates decline by 21\% in the months after winning the lottery. We then examine the impact attending a chosen school has on student test score outcomes. We find substantial test score gains from attending a charter school and some evidence that choosing and attending a high value-added magnet school improves test scores as well. Our results contribute to current evidence that school choice programs can effectively raise test scores of participants. Our findings suggest that this may occur both through an immediate effect on student behavior and through the benefit of attending a higher-performing school.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/w18324.pdf}, url_article = {http://www.nber.org/papers/w18324} } -
Are some degrees worth more than others? Evidence from college admission cutoffs in Chile @unpublished{ some-degrees-worth-more_2014, title = {Are some degrees worth more than others? Evidence from college admission cutoffs in Chile}, author = {Hastings, Justine and Neilson, Christopher A. and Zimmerman, Seth}, year = {2014}, note = {NBER Working Paper No. 19241}, doi = {10.3386/w19241}, abstract = {We use administrative data from Chile from 1985 through 2011 to estimate the returns to postsecondary admission as a function of field of study, course requirements, selectivity, and student socioeconomic status. Our data link high school and college records to labor market earnings from federal tax forms. We exploit hundreds of regression discontinuities from the centralized, score-based admissions system to estimate the causal impacts of interest. Returns are positive and significant only among more-selective degrees. Returns are highly heterogeneous by field of study, with large returns in health, law and social science, as well as selective technology and business degrees. We find small to negative returns in arts, humanities and education degrees. We do not find evidence that vocational curriculum focus increases returns for less selective degrees. We do not find differential outcomes for students coming from low- versus high-socioeconomic backgrounds admitted to selective degrees.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/w19241.pdf}, url_article = {http://www.nber.org/papers/w19241} }
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The Effects of Earnings Disclosure on College Enrollment Decisions @unpublished{ earnings-disclosure_2015, title = {The Effects of Earnings Disclosure on College Enrollment Decisions}, author = {Hastings, Justine and Neilson, Christopher A. and Zimmerman, Seth}, year = {2015}, note = {NBER Working Paper No. 21300 (2015)}, doi = {10.3386/w21300}, abstract = {We test the impact of information about institution- and major-specific labor market outcomes on college enrollment decisions using a randomized controlled trial administered within the online Chilean federal student loan application process. Using linked secondary and post-secondary education records and tax returns for fourteen cohorts of Chilean high school graduates, we created measures of past-cohort earnings for nearly all institution and major combinations in the Chilean higher education system. Applicants were asked a series of survey questions about their enrollment plans and their beliefs about earnings and cost outcomes. Following the survey questions, randomly selected applicants were given information on earnings and costs for past students at their planned enrollment choices, as well as access to a searchable database that allowed them to compare earnings and costs across degrees. Students have unbiased but highly variable beliefs about costs, and upward-biased beliefs about earnings outcomes. Poorer students have less accurate information and choose lower-earning degrees conditional on baseline ability and demographics. While treatment has no effect on whether students enroll in postsecondary education, it does cause low-SES students to enroll in degrees where earnings net of costs were higher for past enrollees. Though effect sizes are small, they substantially exceed the cost of implementing the disclosure policy.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/w21300.pdf}, url_article = {http://www.nber.org/papers/w21300} }
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The Evolving Impacts of COVID-19 on Small Businesses Since the CARES ACT @unpublished{ covid-sbs-evolution_2020, title = {The Evolving Impacts of COVID-19 on Small Businesses Since the CARES ACT}, author = {Humphries, John Eric and Neilson, Christopher A. and Ulyssea, Gabriel}, year = {2020}, note = {Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 2230}, abstract = {This note provides new evidence on how small business owners have been impacted by COVID-19, and how these effects have evolved over time since the passage of the CARES Act. As part of a broader and ongoing project, we collected survey data from more than 8,000 small business owners in the U.S. from March 28th, one day after the CARES Act was passed, through April 20th. The data include information on their firm size, layoffs, beliefs about the future prospects of their businesses, as well as their awareness of existing government relief programs. We provide three main findings. First, by the time the CARES Act was passed, surveyed small business owners were already severely impacted by COVID-19-related disruptions, with 60\% having laid of workers. Second, business owners’ expectations about the future are in general negative and have continuously deteriorated throughout our study period, with 37\% of respondents in the first week reporting that they did not expect to recover within 2 years, growing to 46\% by the last week. Third, we show that the smallest businesses had the least awareness of government assistance programs, the slowest growth in awareness after the passage of the CARES Act, and never caught up with the larger businesses. The latter indicate that small businesses may have missed out on initial Paycheck Protection Program funds because of low baseline awareness and differential access to information relative to larger firms.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/covid19_sbs/HNU_2020.pdf} } -
Teacher Preparation, Pre-College Human Capital and Student Learning: Evidence from Enseña Chile @techreport{DeGregorioNeilsonGallegos2026_eCh, author = {De Gregorio, Soledad and Neilson, Christopher A. and Gallegos, Sebasti\'an}, title = {Teacher Preparation, Pre-College Human Capital and Student Learning: Evidence from Ense\~{n}a Chile}, year = {2026}, month = {August}, type = {Working Paper}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/eCh_Teachers/} } -
The Welfare Effects of including Household Preferences in School Assignment Systems: Evidence from Ecuador @unpublished{ ecuador-ccas-switch_2022, title = {The Welfare Effects of including Household Preferences in School Assignment Systems: Evidence from Ecuador}, author = {Elacqua, Gregory and Jacas, Isabel and Krussig, Thomas and Méndez, Carolina and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2022}, note = {IDB Working Paper Series (Number IDB-WP-01395)}, abstract = {"We partner with Ecuador's government to implement a centralized school choice system using a Deferred Acceptance algorithm in Manta. Our study evaluates the welfare impact of transitioning from a distance-based assignment system to one that incorporates families' preferences. Results show that accounting for preferences yields substantial welfare gains. Counterfactual analyses suggest that alternative mechanisms offer limited improvements compared to the benefits of preference inclusion and coordinated assignments. Household survey data on beliefs and satisfaction support these findings, indicating that centralized school choice systems can deliver significant welfare effects in developing countries."}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/Ecuador-CCAS-Switch/Elacqua%20et%20al%20(2024)%20ecuador-CCAS-switch.pdf} } -
Making Algorithmic Transparency Meaningful: Evidence from Chile's National School Admissions Platform @unpublished{ algorithmic-transparency-mat_2026, title = {Making Algorithmic Transparency Meaningful: Evidence from Chile's National School Admissions Platform}, author = {Medina, Exequiel and Neilson, Christopher A. and Ortiz Mesías, Leonardo}, year = {2026}, note = {ConsiliumBots Working Paper Series, Issue 05}, abstract = {Governments worldwide increasingly deploy algorithmic systems to allocate scarce public goods. The dominant transparency paradigm focuses on expert audit rather than citizen comprehension. We propose a substantive standard, Meaningful Algorithmic Transparency (MAT): information delivered to affected users must be proactive (placed into awareness, not merely published), tailored (referring to the user's decision context), and actionable (delivered before the decision closes). We develop the argument through Chile's Sistema de Admisión Escolar (SAE), a national school admissions platform serving roughly 470,000 families per year. Two measurements document the residual comprehension gap. Linking the SAE Satisfaction Survey to administrative truth for four cycles (2020–2023, N≈140,000), we show that families systematically overstate their placement probability: among applicants the platform can pre-identify as high-risk, the median family believes the risk is around 20\% when it is in fact around 80\%. The bias is uneven: at the same objective risk, lower-SES applicants understate by more, with a conditional gradient that is statistically stable across all four cycles. In the SAE Parent Surveys (2023–25), self-reported familiarity with a key procedural rule nearly doubled across cycles while verifiable comprehension barely moved (2.3\% to 4.9\%). The comprehension gap is therefore persistent and unevenly distributed, falling more heavily on the families whose outcomes most depend on effective information delivery, even when the underlying mechanism gives those families priority. We propose six operational components and show how Chile's existing regulatory architecture (access-to-information law, algorithmic-transparency recommendations, data-protection safeguards, and sector-specific regulation) can be articulated to make the standard enforceable.}, url = {https://consiliumbots.github.io/working-papers-cb/algorithmic_transparency/working_paper/algorithmic_transparency.pdf} }
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Fifty Years of Admission Exams and Gaps in College Access in Chile@unpublished{ paa-gaps_2024, title = {Fifty Years of Admission Exams and Gaps in College Access in Chile}, author = {Barrios-Fernández, Andrés and Gallegos, Sebastian and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2024}, note = {World Development Report 2024: The Middle-Income Trap}, abstract = {'This paper documents the dramatic expansion of educational opportunities over the past five decades in Chile, the fastest-growing country in Latin America. Utilizing historical and administrative data, it identifies significant progress in closing gender, ethnic, geographic, and socioeconomic gaps in college access. The study finds reductions in the gender gap in test scores, increased participation of low-SES and indigenous students, and greater geographic representation in college exams, while highlighting areas for continued improvement.'} } -
Firm Sorting, College Major, and the Gender Earnings Gap @unpublished{ worker-sorting_2021, title = {Firm Sorting, College Major, and the Gender Earnings Gap}, author = {Huneeus, Federico and Miller, Conrad and Neilson, Christopher A. and Zimmerman, Seth}, year = {2021}, note = {Industrial Relations Section Working Paper Series (May 2021, No. 648)}, abstract = {A growing body of evidence shows that differences in firm-specific pay premiums account for a large share of the gender pay gap. This paper asks how a common form of pre-labor market skill specialization, college major, mediates access to high-paying firms, and what this means for the gender earnings gap. Using employer-employee tax data from Chile matched to educational records, we show that differences in college major account for more than two-thirds of the firm contribution to the gender earnings gap among college admits. Degrees in Technology, which are numerous, male-dominated, and associated with high firm premiums, drive these effects.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/WorkerFirmSorting/Returns_to_Major_and_Firm_Sorting.pdf} } -
A Decade of Centralized School Choice Admission in Chile: Achievements and Challenges @unpublished{ sae-decade_2026, title = {A Decade of Centralized School Choice Admission in Chile: Achievements and Challenges}, author = {Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2026}, note = {Working paper (Draft: May 2026)}, abstract = {This paper reviews the first decade of Chile's Sistema de Admisión Escolar (SAE), a national school assignment institution created under the 2015 Inclusion Law to replace fragmented school-by-school admissions with a coordinated platform for the publicly funded sector. Around the world, access to publicly funded education is rarely allocated only through prices. Societies therefore need rules for rationing scarce seats: how preferences count, who receives priority, and how principles such as equal opportunity, sibling priority, and vulnerability should be implemented when demand exceeds supply. Chile's reform is a useful case because it did not simply adopt a matching algorithm. It built a national institution around three pillars: reducing strategic incentives across the design, coordinating public and private-subsidized schools through one platform, and making the algorithm, priorities, and data transparent enough to support evaluation and public scrutiny. The paper organizes the decade around four questions: what was implemented, how Chile learned while scaling, what happened after a decade, and what remains unfinished. The first answer is that SAE was more than Deferred Acceptance. The design combined a low-strategy assignment rule with unrestricted preference lists, legally defined priorities, lottery-based tie-breaking, sibling and family rules, fallback provisions, complementary-round rules, national coverage, and public documentation. These features reduced many of the discretionary and strategic margins that characterized the pre-SAE system. They also created an administrative and research infrastructure that made the system observable as it scaled. The second answer is that implementation design mattered almost as much as mechanism design. SAE was rolled out regionally between 2016 and 2019, with national implementation consolidated by 2020. This staggered rollout created a research-policy loop: administrative data, surveys, experiments, quasi-experimental variation, and annual technical recommendations could be connected to family behavior inside the platform. Much was unknown ex ante. It was not clear whether families would trust a centralized assignment process, submit sufficiently broad lists, understand admission chances, or respond to information. Nor was it clear where local scarcity would bind, how sibling and fallback rules would work in practice, or how quickly the system could adapt. The central lesson from this learning process is that reducing strategic ranking incentives is necessary but not sufficient. Even under a low-strategy assignment mechanism, families still need to discover schools, compare quality and cost, understand admission chances, and realize when their current application portfolio exposes them to non-placement risk. The evidence reviewed in the paper shows that families often overestimate admission chances, underestimate feasible nearby options, and stop searching too early. These frictions are not merely informational details; they affect who can use the assignment system effectively. SAE's response was to develop a "smart platform" layer on top of the assignment mechanism. Risk warnings, personalized feedback reports, the School Explorer/MIME tools, WhatsApp nudges, and later Anótate en la Lista all use platform data to make options, risks, and consequences more visible to families. The evidence points to a consistent pattern: platform-embedded information can change application behavior. Families add options, reduce predicted non-placement risk, and in several studies move toward schools with higher measured value-added. New follow-up evidence is consistent with some of these gains translating into later learning outcomes, though the paper treats those results conservatively and distinguishes published evidence from new and companion working-paper results. The paper also adds three empirical contributions to the existing evidence. First, it reports an out-of-sample replication of the risk-warning regression discontinuity after the original QJE study window, covering SAE cycles from 2018 to 2023 and linking later cohorts to fourth-grade SIMCE outcomes. Second, it uses linked administrative records to quantify the new in-year aftermarket platform, Anótate en la Lista, showing that off-cycle applications are comparable in scale to the main round but still operate largely outside SAE's equity priorities. Third, it presents staggered event-study evidence on segregation, showing convergence in prioritario representation at oversubscribed schools, where the assignment mechanism actually binds. After a decade, SAE's aggregate assignment performance is strong but bounded. In 2025, 82.6 percent of applicants were assigned to one of their top three listed schools and 92.8 percent to a listed preference. These outcomes place Chile within the range of mature centralized systems. But the remaining 7.2 percent non-placement rate is geographically concentrated, and national averages hide local markets where desired seats are scarce. The evidence is consistent with local supply constraints shaping what SAE can deliver: demographic growth and migration increased demand in some areas, private-subsidized school entry slowed sharply, and some desirable high-value-added private-subsidized schools exited to the unsubsidized private sector. As a result, empty seats in some markets coexist with acute shortages in others. The equity effects are similarly bounded. SAE appears to have improved access at oversubscribed schools, where discretionary screening previously mattered most and where the allocation rule has real bite. However, aggregate segregation effects are harder to identify causally and depend on the measure. Residential stratification, the unsubsidized private sector, school entry and exit, and local supply constraints all operate outside the assignment algorithm. The right interpretation is therefore neither triumphalist nor dismissive: SAE delivered measurable gains in access at constrained, high-demand schools, while leaving broader segregation and quality-access problems for complementary policy. The unfinished agenda follows directly from these limits. First, assignment policy must be connected more explicitly to supply policy. A centralized mechanism can allocate scarce seats more transparently, but it cannot create desirable seats where too few exist. Second, the aftermarket needs stronger design. Anótate en la Lista made in-year demand visible at scale, but its first-come-first-served logic does not yet incorporate the equity priorities of the main round. Third, many algorithmic and priority-rule adjustments remain to be debated and evaluated, including sibling logic, fallback rules, tie-breaking, capacity provisions, and priority definitions. Fourth, communication with families remains a policy margin: families need clearer, timely, personalized information about risk, feasible options, sibling trade-offs, fallback consequences, and aftermarket rules. The broader message is that Chile's experience is best understood as institution plus learning. SAE built a transparent national assignment system, used staggered implementation to learn while scaling, and developed smart-platform tools to address the behavioral frictions revealed by that process. The next decade requires extending the same iterative discipline to the margins that have changed more slowly: supply, the aftermarket, algorithm and priority adjustments, communication with families, and public governance of complex assignment rules. Centralized assignment can make school access fairer, more transparent, and more empirically governable, but the mechanism is only one part of the institution. Its long-run value depends on whether the system can keep learning from its own operation and translate that learning into rules, tools, and policies that families can trust.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/SAE10/SAE10_paper_draft_may2026.pdf} }
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The Equilibrium Effects of Public Provision in Education Markets: Evidence from a Public School Construction Policy @unpublished{ ge-school-construction_2020, title = {The Equilibrium Effects of Public Provision in Education Markets: Evidence from a Public School Construction Policy}, author = {Dinerstein, Michael and Neilson, Christopher A. and Otero, Sebastián}, year = {2020}, note = {Industrial Relations Section Working Paper Series (November 2020, No. 645)}, abstract = {In markets with private options, the optimal level of public provision may require balancing a tradeoff between reducing private options market power with the possibility of crowding out potentially high-quality products. These considerations are particularly relevant in many developing countries education systems where state capacity is increasing but low levels of past public provision mean many private schools already exist. We study the equilibrium effects of public provision in the context of a large expansion of public schools in the Dominican Republic. Over a five-year period, the government aimed to increase the number of public school classrooms by 78\%. Using an event study framework, we estimate the effect of a new public school on neighborhood outcomes and competing private schools, where we instrument for how quickly the public school construction project finished with the characteristics of the contractor randomly assigned to build the project. We find that a new public school increased public sector enrollment significantly. As public enrollment increased, a large number of private schools closed while the surviving schools lowered prices and increased school quality. To study how the level of public provision affects the overall level of quality in the market, we specify and estimate an empirical model of demand (students choosing schools) and supply (schools choosing whether to enter, stay open and what price to charge). We use the model estimates to calculate the level of public provision that maximizes learning. Due to equilibrium competitive effects, we find that the optimal level is non-monotonic in the quality of the increased public schooling.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/SchoolConstructionGE/DNO_Nov_2020_WP.pdf} }
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Can Information on School Attributes and Placement Probabilities Direct Search and Choice? Evidence from Choice Platforms in Ecuador and Peru @unpublished{ warningsperu_2022, title = {Can Information on School Attributes and Placement Probabilities Direct Search and Choice? Evidence from Choice Platforms in Ecuador and Peru}, author = {Arteaga, Felipe and Elacqua, Gregory and Krussig, Thomas and Méndez, Carolina and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2022}, note = {IDB Working Paper Series}, abstract = {This paper evaluates how new information influences families' applications and assignment outcomes in elementary school choice settings. Using a multi-country randomized controlled trial based in Tacna, Peru, and Manta, Ecuador, the authors study the effects of providing personalized feedback on school placement risk and school suggestions. The results show that in Peru, applicants who received this information added more schools and were more likely to include recommended options, improving their application portfolios. In Ecuador, the intervention had marginal effects, possibly due to lower school density and lack of outreach via WhatsApp. The findings highlight the importance of context and communication channels in shaping school choice behavior.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/WarningsPeru/ReplicatingSmartPlatforms-Ecuador-and-Peru.pdf} }
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The Rise of Coordinated Choice and Assignment Systems in Education Markets Around the World @unpublished{ ccas_2024, title = {The Rise of Coordinated Choice and Assignment Systems in Education Markets Around the World}, author = {Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2024}, note = {World Bank Development Report: Background Papers 2024}, abstract = {This paper reviews current policies regulating access to education worldwide and documents the rise of platforms implementing coordinated choice and assignment systems in education markets. It reviews primary, secondary, and higher education markets in 149 countries to determine the use of coordinated systems for processing applications and assignments. The paper also documents the policy details surrounding these systems, focusing on assignment mechanisms, priority criteria, preference reporting, application timing, and information provision. The analysis reveals a substantial increase in the adoption of coordinated systems, with 60 percent of the countries reviewed implementing some form of coordinated mechanism to determine access to education. The study shows that policy choices “in the wild” exhibit significant heterogeneity and often create incentives for families to behave strategically, regardless of the specific assignment mechanism used. Finally, many of the policies reviewed do not align with best practices, presenting a unique opportunity to enhance equity and efficiency through evidence-based adjustments. The trend in adoption suggests that many low- and middle-income countries will implement digital platforms to coordinate access to education and could look to lessons from empirical market design when creating new systems, potentially leapfrogging to the frontier of systems that provide access to education.}, url = {https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/fa6ab76559c14f38def82e2cedf3b446-0050022024/original/Education-Markets-Around-the-World-Chris-Neilson.pdf}, url_article = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/CSAS/Education-Markets-Around-the-World-Chris-Neilson.pdf} }
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Screening and Recruiting Talent At Teacher Colleges Using Pre-College Academic Achievement @unpublished{ teacher-quality_2019, title = {Screening and Recruiting Talent At Teacher Colleges Using Pre-College Academic Achievement}, author = {Calle, Franco and Gallegos, Sebastian and Karnani, Mohit and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2019}, note = {Industrial Relations Section Working Paper Series (November 2019, No. 636)}, abstract = {This paper studies screening and recruiting policies that use pre-college academic achievement to restrict or incentivize entry to teacher-colleges. Using historical records of college entrance exam scores since 1967 and linking them to administrative data on the population of teachers in Chile, we first document a robust positive and concave relationship between pre-college academic achievement and several short and long run measures of teacher productivity. We then assess the effectiveness of two recent policies that used pre-college achievement to recruit or screen out students entering teacher-colleges. Using a regression discontinuity de-sign based on the government’s recruitment efforts, we evaluate the effectiveness of targeted scholarships at shifting career choices of high achieving students as well as the effect on the overall stock of teachers predicted effectiveness. We then assess a screening policy that forced teacher colleges to exclude below-average applicants. We quantify the policy effectiveness by retroactively simulating the rule and evaluating its success at screening out low performing teachers. Comparing this benchmark policy rule to a series of data-driven alternatives, we find that even simple screening policies can identify a significant portion of ex-post low performing teachers. In both policies studied, screening out low performing students is more effective than targeting recruitment efforts to only very high achieving students. Taken together, these findings suggest that the combination of better administrative data and flexible prediction methods can be used to implement practical screening and recruiting policies in some contexts and allow for better targeting of investments in future teachers.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/TeacherQuality/CGKN2022_Teachers.pdf} }
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Quantifying the Benefits of Digitalizing and Centralizing Student Applications and Assignment to Schools @unpublished{ quantifying-benefits-ccas_2022, title = {Quantifying the Benefits of Digitalizing and Centralizing Student Applications and Assignment to Schools}, author = {Aguilera, Antonia and Elacqua, Gregory and Lavin, Josefina and Margitic, Juan and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2022}, note = {IDB Technical Note (Number IDB-TN-02571)}, doi = {10.18235/0004620}, abstract = {This technical note examines the cost-efficiency and broader benefits of implementing centralized digital student assignment systems, using Chile as a case study. The authors estimate that the reform yields over USD 13 million in net benefits by reducing implementation and search costs, improving administrative efficiency, and enabling better school-student matching. Additional advantages include enhanced transparency, better planning tools for governments, and improved satisfaction among families. These findings provide empirical support for scaling centralized systems across Latin America.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/QuantifyingCCAS/Quantifying-the-Benefits-of-Digitalizing-and-Centralizing-Sudent-Applications-and-Assignment-to-Schools.pdf} }
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The Potential of Smart Matching Platforms in Teacher Assignment: The Case of Ecuador @unpublished{ teacher-ecuador-qsm_2022, title = {The Potential of Smart Matching Platforms in Teacher Assignment: The Case of Ecuador}, author = {Elacqua, Gregory and Gómez, Leidy and Krussig, Thomas and Marotta, Luana and Méndez, Carolina and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2022}, note = {IDB Working Paper Series (Number IDB-WP-01395)}, doi = {10.18235/0004527}, abstract = {This paper studies the potential of personalized -smart- information interventions to improve teacher assignment results in the context of a centralized choice and assignment system (CCAS) in Ecuador. Specifically, we focus on the impact that a personalized non-assignment risk warning, coupled with a list of "achievable" teaching position recommendations, had on teacher applications in the -I Want to Become a Teacher- selection process. We study the causal effect of the intervention on teachers school choices, assessing its impact on the equilibrium probability of being assigned and on the overall results of the selection process, both in terms of the percentage of filled vacancies and the selection scores of as- signed teachers. We find that treated teachers, in equilibrium, are much more likely to modify their application and obtain an assignment. This result highlights the potential of similar information interventions in other contexts. We furthermore present evidence that the intervention led to increased overall assignment rates and selection scores.}, url = {https://doi.org/10.18235/0004527} }
Work in Progress
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Subjective Beliefs and Dynamic Human Capital Investment Decisions in Dominican Republic@unpublished{ ave_2014, title = {Subjective Beliefs and Dynamic Human Capital Investment Decisions in Dominican Republic}, author = {Berry, James and Coffman, Lucas and Morales, Daniel and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2014}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {This five year project looks to study how and why information could affect the human capital investment decisions of young students in the Dominican Republic. Together with the government of the Dominican Republic and in particular with our partners at IDEICE, we develop and test at scale a policy relevant information intervention that conveyed information about the feasibility and labor market earnings associated with different levels of education levels. The intervention consisted of a series of telenovela videos, classroom posters and class discussions. Over a four year period the project implemented in ever larger sets of public schools finally reaching 50\% of all schools in 2016. Detailed information about beliefs, time use and academic achievement was collected for a large panel of students, parents, teachers and principals. Following a successful policy implementation and evaluation, the intervention has now been adopted as a government policy and has been implemented in all public schools in the country.} }
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Dynamic Complementarities of Information Interventions and Human Capital in Peru@unpublished{ dfm_2015, title = {Dynamic Complementarities of Information Interventions and Human Capital in Peru}, author = {Gallego, Francisco A. and Molina, Oswaldo and Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2015}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {This is a five year project that looks to study how the timing of information can affect different types of human capital investment decisions of young students in Peru. Together with the government of the Peru and in particular with our partners at MineduLAB, we develop and test at scale a policy relevant information intervention that conveyed information about the feasibility and labor market earnings associated with different levels and types of education levels. The intervention consisted of a series of telenovela videos, classroom posters and class discussions. Over a four year period the project implemented in ever larger sets of public schools finally reaching 50\% of all schools in 2017 and scaled up nationally in 2019. Detailed information about beliefs, time use and academic achievement was collected for a large panel of students, parents, teachers and principals. Following a successful policy implementation and evaluation, the intervention has now been adopted as a government policy and has been implemented in all public schools in the country.} }
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Carrots and Sticks for Teacher Colleges: The Equilibrium Design of Teacher Recruitment Policy@unpublished{ bvp-takeup_2018, title = {Carrots and Sticks for Teacher Colleges: The Equilibrium Design of Teacher Recruitment Policy}, author = {Kapor, Adam and Neilson, Christopher A. and Sanchez, Cristian}, year = {2018}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {We study the joint design of subsidies and standards in the market for teacher training. Chile's Beca Vocación de Profesor paired a carrot, free tuition for students who score above a college-admission-test threshold and enroll in a teacher (pedagogy) college, with a stick that barred participating colleges from admitting students below a minimum score. State colleges were mandated into the program while private colleges chose whether to adopt, and we use this mandate asymmetry for identification. Combining the universe of test takers with enrollment records that cover every higher-education institution, we document sharp demand responses at both thresholds, a rise of roughly one half in the share of high-scoring students entering teaching, and steep selection into adoption: private colleges whose students mostly cleared the floor join at high rates, while those serving lower-scoring students largely stay out and keep enrolling them. We build and estimate an equilibrium model in which students choose programs and outside options and colleges choose whether to participate. The model reproduces the reduced-form discontinuities and, applied to the pre-policy baseline, predicts the treated cohort out of sample. We then solve the policymaker's problem of setting the two thresholds to maximize the average admission score of entering teachers subject to a scholarship budget. The stick turns out to be an adoption tax with an interior optimum: a higher floor upgrades the intake of colleges that stay in but drives marginal colleges out, and their would-be students re-sort into the less selective sector outside the program, so its net effect on quality is ambiguous and depends on how much of the market can exit. The carrot, whose pull weakens as scores rise and outside options improve, buys teacher quantity far more readily than quality. A modest floor is the cost-effective quality lever, while the carrot's main role is to sustain the supply of teachers; at its own budget the reform Chile actually chose sits close to the efficient frontier.} }
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High-School Dropouts: Cutting losses or just missing out? @unpublished{ dominicanrds_2018, title = {High-School Dropouts: Cutting losses or just missing out?}, author = {Barahona, Nano and Kent, Christina and Neilson, Christopher A. and Otero, Sebastián}, year = {2018}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {This paper examines whether education is a valuable investment for middle school students in the bottom decile of achievement in the context of the Dominican Republic, currently the lowest scoring country on the international PISA tests. For students struggling academically, the potential returns to education may appear small compared to the immediate wages earned in the labor market. We estimate the value of years of secondary education and high-school completion for low-performing students by exploiting the passing cutoffs on the eighth and twelfth grade national exams. We find that students who barely pass the exam in eighth grade complete more years of education, are more likely to enroll in college and experience higher earnings. Similar results are found for those who marginally pass the high-school exit exam. A broad implication of these facts is that education has large and positive returns even for the lowest part of the ability distribution.}, url = {https://www.christopher-neilson.com/work/documents/DominicanRDs/BKNO_Nov_2017.pdf} }
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Student Loans, Student Choices and the Market Structure of Higher Education@unpublished{ loans-marketstructure_2018, title = {Student Loans, Student Choices and the Market Structure of Higher Education}, author = {Neilson, Christopher A.}, year = {2018}, note = {Work in progress} }
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Student Choices and the Return to College Major and Selectivity@unpublished{ rds-hnz_2019, title = {Student Choices and the Return to College Major and Selectivity}, author = {Hastings, Justine and Neilson, Christopher A. and Schulze, Karl and Zimmerman, Seth}, year = {2019}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {This paper studies how the choice of college and major are related to life cycle earnings in a context where selection bias can potentially confound direct measurement. Three decades of ranked college applications and assignment data for the population of college students in Chile are linked to a decade of administrative tax data on earnings which allow for the study of student choices, college and major affect earnings. Application behavior, OLS earnings regressions and thousands of different RD earnings estimates are tied together using a parsimonious model of college major choice and earnings determination. After considering for the presence of selection bias, results stemming from the analysis suggest that there is considerable heterogeneity that is predictable across options. This heterogeneity can be explained by a combination of course content and observable comparative advantage given by interactions of major characteristics and student skills.} }
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Adaptive Experimentation at Scale: Testing Benefit-Cost Transportability of Information Interventions in Colombia@unpublished{ icfes-nudge2search, title = {Adaptive Experimentation at Scale: Testing Benefit-Cost Transportability of Information Interventions in Colombia}, author = {Bettinger, Eric and Kremer, Michael and Lizarazo, Felipe and Neilson, Christopher A. and Posso, Christian and Saavedra, Juan}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {Students make high-stakes higher education choices with limited information, and they often underuse readily available data on program quality and labor-market returns. Colombia's national testing agency (ICFES) built an online portal with detailed information by major and institution, yet fewer than 5\% of students accessed it. We partnered with ICFES to study a science-of-scaling question that arises when digital delivery is cheap: which intervention design should be scaled? We conducted two nationwide randomized experiments that delivered pop-up messages to 519,000 students as they accessed mandatory exam results. The interventions substantially increased information consumption: 15-25\% of treated students clicked to view additional information. However, testing multiple variants revealed that more elaborate designs did not reliably outperform simpler prompts: in the 2017 cohort, a simple salient message generated 20.9\% engagement versus 13.1\% for a loss-framed alternative, and the same qualitative ranking appears in the 2018 cohort despite a different population. Despite large changes in information-seeking behavior, we find limited effects on tertiary enrollment over the subsequent three years. Our findings demonstrate both the promise and limits of digital nudges. Digital platforms enable rapid, policy-relevant experimentation that identifies which variants retain effectiveness in the natural implementation environment. The key advantage of platforms is thus not only cheap delivery, but cheap learning about which designs to scale and which outcomes scale with them.} }
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Balancing Accountability: Regulating with Test-Based Standards Without Overreach@unpublished{ balancing-accountability_2026, title = {Balancing Accountability: Regulating with Test-Based Standards Without Overreach}, author = {Bennett, Magdalena and Neilson, Christopher A. and Rojas Souyet, Nicolás}, year = {2026}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {High-stakes testing is widely used across educational systems, shaping accountability, resource allocation, and school choice. While skewed attendance may undermine these goals, little is known about its impact beyond the exclusion of low-performing students. Using an event-study design and rich administrative data from Chile, this paper examines how testing affects student attendance across grades and performance levels. The authors find highly heterogeneous effects—ranging from −8 to 4 percentage points across the GPA distribution. These effects are negative only among younger, low-performing students, and positive for higher-performing students. The study rules out student-exemption policies and test anxiety as mechanisms, identifying communication, prizes, and grading incentives as explanations. It also highlights the limits of multiple imputation and proposes a machine-learning approach to detect non-representative attendance patterns.} }
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Improving Equity in Danish School Choice: A Digital Guidance Tool for Social Inclusion@unpublished{ improving-equity-danish-school-choice, title = {Improving Equity in Danish School Choice: A Digital Guidance Tool for Social Inclusion}, author = {Bjerre-Nielsen, Andreas and Gandil, Mikkel and Henneberg, Christian Fogel and Neilson, Christopher A.}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {This project evaluates a digital guidance tool designed to improve equity and reduce segregation in Denmark's centralized high school admissions process. The intervention delivers personalized information about school options, admission probabilities, and peer composition to families navigating the Immediate Acceptance (Boston) mechanism. Through a large-scale randomized controlled trial, researchers will assess whether improving access to strategic and demographic information can shift beliefs, improve school application behavior, and promote more inclusive outcomes. The project targets families from disadvantaged and migrant backgrounds who face higher information barriers, and it is developed in collaboration with TetherEd, the University of Copenhagen, and Denmark's Ministry of Education.} }
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Spillover and Congestion Effects of Large-Scale Information Interventions@unpublished{ spillover-congestion-information_2025, title = {Spillover and Congestion Effects of Large-Scale Information Interventions}, author = {Allende, Claudia and Neilson, Christopher A. and Ochoa, Fernando}, year = {2025}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {We study the equilibrium impact of scaling personalized application guidance in Chile’s centralized school assignment system (SAE). A combined individual-level and market-level randomized design isolates the direct effect of information on treated families, congestion stemming from many neighbors reacting simultaneously, and spillovers onto untreated households. Personalized risk reports and tailored recommendations lead families—especially those initially at highest risk of remaining unassigned—to add and re-rank schools in ways that systematically lower their non-assignment probability. Treating entire local markets further reduces aggregate non-assignment rates without creating adverse congestion or negative spillovers, showing that large-scale information provision is a safe, effective complement to strategy-proof assignment mechanisms.} } -
Digital School Profiles, Demand, and Equity in Centralized School Choice@unpublished{ digital-school-profiles_2025, title = {Digital School Profiles, Demand, and Equity in Centralized School Choice}, author = {Allende, Claudia and Neilson, Christopher A. and Ochoa, Fernando}, year = {2025}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {We study how the design of school information on a centralized admissions platform shapes demand and equity, exploiting a large-scale randomized intervention in Chile's national school-choice system in which roughly 600 schools were assigned to receive digital profiles composed of standardized text, photos, and videos embedded directly in the official explorer. Using platform analytics as well as application and enrollment data, we show that these profiles raise user engagement sharply: during the final SAE week the explorer reached about 114,000 users (roughly 15,000 per day), with families exploring an average of seven schools and three detailed profiles per session, and profiled schools receiving roughly five times more clicks than comparable control schools, especially when the profile contained video. The demand shifts translate into enrollment gains of roughly three additional students per profiled school, implying a net present value near USD 20,000 relative to an implementation cost of about USD 100 per profile. The effects are disproportionately larger for disadvantaged families, closing about 30 percent of the pre-existing application gap between poor and non-poor households. Low-cost improvements in how school attributes are presented can therefore reallocate demand toward under-chosen schools, increase enrollments, and enhance equity within centralized school-choice systems.} }
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Queuing for Segregation: Evidence from Access to Childcare in Copenhagen@unpublished{ queing-segregation-childcare-copenhagen_2025, title = {Queuing for Segregation: Evidence from Access to Childcare in Copenhagen}, author = {Bjerre-Nielsen, Andreas and Gørtz, Mette and Kennes, John and Mattana, Elena and Neilson, Christopher A. and Pakzad-Hurson, Bobak}, year = {2025}, note = {Work in progress}, abstract = {Childcare access in Copenhagen is governed by a centralized queue-based allocation system that requires families to pre-select up to two daycare centers well in advance. While intended to promote fairness and efficiency, this institutional design embeds a strategic component that systematically advantages higher socioeconomic status (SES) families. We show that the process of queue selection is a form of strategic shortlisting, closely related to mechanism design problems where agents face constraints on how many options they can express. Families must anticipate future availability and the behavior of others, under uncertainty, when choosing which queues to join. Importantly, these decisions are made while facing unequal outside options—such as access to informal care or job flexibility—which vary systematically with SES. Our empirical analysis combines administrative data with new survey evidence. We find that high-SES families are more likely to apply strategically: they choose riskier or more desirable queues and make aggressive choices such as requesting earlier start dates than they actually need, to gain queue priority. Survey responses confirm that many parents would prefer to start later but request earlier access to improve their chances—highlighting a strategic manipulation of start timing. Further, we document that preferences over timing are tied to labor market considerations. For many parents, particularly those with fewer resources, delays in access create tangible economic costs—such as postponed return to work. These heterogeneous time preferences, coupled with structural constraints in the application process, generate unequal access outcomes and reinforce existing socioeconomic divides. We develop a theoretical framework capturing strategic queue choice under constraints, incorporating uncertainty, outside options, and requeuing frictions. Through simulations, we evaluate alternative designs, showing how modest changes—such as increasing the number of choices or reducing penalties for declining offers—could reduce inequities without sacrificing efficiency. Our findings demonstrate that allocation mechanisms, even when formally neutral, can produce unequal outcomes due to the strategic behavior they incentivize. In doing so, the paper contributes to understanding how public service design can unintentionally deepen segregation and socioeconomic inequality.} }
