Essays in Development Economics and Education

Abstract

Human capital accumulation is central to the process of economic development. This dissertation explores how the design and delivery of educational services affect its recipients. The first chapter examines the trade-offs faced by students at the margin of admission to more selective schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that students who attend more selective schools experience improvements in standardized language scores, but have a worse performance on non-standardized school-based assessments. They also have lower scores in measures of perseverance and are more likely to shift their aspirations and subsequent schooling choices from academic to vocational programs. The second chapter studies the long-term effects of a roll-out of television-based schools in Mexico. I find that an additional telesecundaria in the municipality had positive impacts on the labor market outcomes of exposed cohorts. Finally, the third chapter evaluates the effects of several phone-based agricultural extension programs on farmers' knowledge and their likelihood of using new agricultural technologies. Using data from four different field experiments, we provide evidence that phone-based extension has the potential to increase farmer experimentation with recommended inputs.