The Oscars of Education: The Effects of a Tournament Between Public Schools (Job Market Paper)
Abstract: In this paper, I evaluate a rank-order tournament among public schools in Brazil. Yearly, top-performing schools within the eligible group receive a non-pecuniary recognition and a financial prize. Further, low-performing schools are designated to a support program, where they are allocated an extra budget and paired with an awardee to implement a cooperation program. I provide evidence of the effects of the policy in three dimensions. First, a differences-in-discontinuities design is implemented by exploring the tournament's introduction timing and eligibility criteria, revealing substantial improvements in students' test scores due to the tournament's introduction. Eligible schools locally outperformed non-competing schools by 0.23 and 0.34 standard deviations in Portuguese and Mathematics, respectively. Second, by exploring an exogenous cutoff that assigns the yearly prize to top-performing schools, I implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, and I do not find that winning the award has an effect on test scores three years later. Finally, by performing an analogous procedure, I find that the support program has a positive effect on the test scores of the low-performing schools assigned to it.
Selected Presentations: IZA/ECONtribute Workshop on the Economics of Education (2023) - 18th BiGSEM Doctoral Workshop on Economics and Management (2023) - 45th Meeting of the Brazilian Econometric Society (2023) - 28th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Young Economists (2024)
Distance Learning in Higher Education: Evidence from Teaching Degrees in Brazil (Paper)
Abstract: This paper assesses differences in teaching performance between graduates from distance and traditional face-to-face teaching degree programs. I used data from a nationwide standardized test among secondary school students in Brazil, which was matched with a complementary teacher-level survey. The distance to the nearest face-to-face teaching degree is used as an instrument to account for the selection of individuals into the two types of degrees. I find that holding a distance degree among Portuguese teachers is associated with a decrease in their students’ standardized test scores, while no differences are found for Mathematics teachers. By examining further intermediate outcomes at the teacher level, I explore potential mechanisms. On average, teachers from distance degrees report lower engagement in further professional development and cultural activities, together with a less dynamic teaching approach. Overall, this study highlights that the current expansion in distance degrees in higher education demands a cautious approach. However, it also suggests that incentivizing further training and academic engagement can mitigate these potential drawbacks.