New working paper

School choice, school switching, and optimal assignment

My first working paper is out! The paper School choice, school switching, and optimal assignment, coauthored with Hessel Oosterbeek and Bas van der Klaauw, is now available online as a Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper.

Abstract

Close to 20% of secondary school students in Amsterdam - and elsewhere - transfer between secondary schools at some point, even when initially placed in their most-preferred school. School switching is costly for the students involved and disrupts the learning environment of their former and new classmates. Using data from the Amsterdam secondary-school match linked to administrative registers, we show that switching can be predicted by hard-to-rationalize initial school choices. Over 60% of switchers can be correctly identified at the admission stage. Simulations indicate that encouraging predicted switchers to adjust their preference ranking of schools could reduce the switching rate by almost 15%.

JEL codes: I21, C35, C53

Keywords: secondary education, school choice, school switching, admission lottery