Does it matter which top institution you choose? A case study of Brazilian graduate admissions

Carregando...
Imagem de Miniatura
Data
2020-05-26
Orientador(res)
Fuente Estevan, Fernanda Gonçalves de La
Título da Revista
ISSN da Revista
Título de Volume
Resumo

In this thesis, we investigate the effect of attending a selective master institution in Economics in terms of Ph.D. placement. To do that, we use data from the ANPEC exam, which master programs use to select their students. To address the potential selection bias and identify the causal effect, we adopt two empirical strategies. The first is the method proposed by Dale and Krueger (2002), and the second is the RDD framework. The Dale and Krueger (2002) approach matches students who applied to and were admitted by the same institutions. In the RDD framework, we exploit the admission discontinuity. Using the sample in which students passed in the four of the Top 4 institutions, i.e., in FGVEESP, FGV-EPGE, IPE-USP, PUC-RIO, we compare within the selective institutions. The results suggest that only students at IPE-USP seem to enroll with a lower probability in a Ph.D. program in Brazil. Using the sample in which students passed in at least two of the Top 4 institutions, we compare within the selective institutions pairwise. In that case, the results suggest that FGV-EPGE seems to have an advantage over IPE-USP in terms of Ph.D. enrollments abroad. That advantage persists when we consider only high reputation Ph.D. programs. PUC-RIO has an advantage compared to IPE-USP only when we consider the most reputable Ph.D. programs, but does not seem to have an advantage when compared to FGV-EESP and FGV-EPGE. In addition, the estimates for ANPEC exam performance are significant. In particular, the students ranked until the 15th position seems to have higher chances of enrolling in a Ph.D. program. In the RDD framework, estimated coefficients are not significant when we compare Top 4 with non-Top 4 institutions. It seems that students that attend a more selective institution and were admitted in the margin enroll in a Ph.D. program with the same probability than a student that attends a less selective institution.


Descrição
Área do Conhecimento