Opportunity Bound: Transport and Access to College in a Megacity (Job Market Paper)
This paper examines the causal effects of new transportation infrastructure on college enrollment, choice, completion, and early labor market outcomes. To estimate these effects, I use novel geolocated administrative data and a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits the rollout of two new public transportation lines in Lima, a megacity of 12 million people. My findings indicate that at the neighborhood level, a 17% reduction in commuting time to college increases enrollment rates by 6%, primarily driven by private college enrollment. Moreover, female students influenced by this policy tend to enroll in low-quality private colleges, which are also connected to the new lines. In contrast, male students are more likely to enroll in public colleges, which are more dispersed throughout the city. Using a model of college choice, I find that for one standard deviation increase in wage returns, male students are willing to commute up to 55% more minutes than female students. In the medium and long run, access to transport increases an individual's likelihood of graduating from college by 12% and access to white-collar jobs by 4%. These results suggest that while improved transportation can increase human capital accumulation, the increase in opportunities is limited by gender differences in willingness to travel.
Presented at: AEFP, Seminario MAP, WEAI Graduate Student Workshop, UEA North America, Columbia University, PUCP, NEUDC (Harvard University), SEA, LAUrban LACEA Rio de Janeiro, PUC Chile, Bucknell University, Oberlin College, Rutgers University, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Wake Forest University, ifo Institut, 8th Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Research Conference - World Bank, 2nd Annual World Bank Conference on Transport Economics, SOLE (scheduled)
College Licensing and Reputation Effects on the Labor Market
With Jose Flor-Toro and Matteo Magnaricotte
Presented at: NEUDC (2022), 9th Conference for Young Economists (UBC-UDEP), LACEA-LAMES (2022), AEFP (2023)
We study how better information on the quality of college education affectsgraduates' labor market outcomes. Between 2015 and 2021, Peru evaluated itsexisting colleges and awarded operating licenses to the 94 institutions meetingminimum quality standards. Using administrative labor market data and a staggered difference-in-differences approach, we find positive effects of positive news about graduates' human capital: within one year of the licensing announcement, wages increase by 8%, employment by 7%, hours worked by 8%, and the likelihood of being employed in a large firm and the public sector by 6% and 5%, respectively. Most effects are concentrated among graduates with shorter or no tenure at their current job, while we don't find signicant effects for workers with longer tenure. This suggests that uncertainty about the productivity of workers is reduced over time, with public signals affecting workers' welfare.
Creating future female scientists: Experimental evidence on
improving STEM skills and attitudes in Peru
With Maria Rosales and Micaela Sviatschi
Presented at: AEFP (2021), Viernes Economico PUCP, UNMSM.
The STEM gender gap has strongly persisted over the years and it is even more pronounced in developing countries. We study the case of a program that provides weekly science workshops to young girls in Lima, Peru. We evaluate whether this program improves girls' educational achievement, attitudes and aspirations using an experimental design. We find no significant effects on girls' academic performance until after 2 years of the program. However, we find that girls who participated in the program are more overcondent about their grades in science, have strong negative perceptions of non- STEM majors, and trade-off school time for personal projects.
Citizenship Policy and the Spread of Communicable Diseases: Evidence from the Dominican Republic
With Eduardo Campillo Betancourt and Jose Flor-Toro
We study a controversial 2013 policy in the Dominican Republic that targeted as much as 10% of the country’s population based on their Haitian ancestry and limited their safe access to public health services. Beyond the direct negative effects such policies may have on the targeted group, we argue that they have important indirect effects through the contagion of communicable diseases. We exploit the timing and differential exposure to these policies across the country, as well as highly disaggregated epidemiological data to provide evidence of these indirect effects. Our estimates evidence a notable increase in the number of Dengue cases, a highly contagious disease. We find no increase in the incidence of non-communicable diseases. We argue that these results are due to a restriction in access to health services for the targeted population. These findings show how restricting access to public services for specific groups can have a deleterious effect on the non-targeted population.