Essays on Education Markets

This dissertation investigates educational disparities in the matching markets of high school choice and college admissions. The first chapter, joint with Ph.D. students Victor Delgado and Rui Zeng, studies the spatial inequality issue in high school choice within the context of the centralized system of public high school admissions in Mexico City's metropolitan area (COMIPEMS). The uneven spatial distribution of elite high schools, combined with students' sensitivity to commuting distance when making applications, results in high-achieving students from distant areas being significantly underrepresented in elite schools. By assuming the observed matching is stable in the equilibrium, we estimate student preferences via a parametric Bayesian approach with a Gibbs sampler, allowing for track heterogeneity. Our preference estimates show that students face a quality-proximity tradeoff, which is more salient for the academic track (versus the non-academic track). Counterfactual distance-based subsidies would significantly increase high-achieving students' admission to elite school programs, especially of the academic track. In contrast, prioritization policies alone have negligible effects on assignment outcomes without addressing the demand side or the locations of supply. Our findings call for increasing the supply of elite high schools in distant areas within this centralized assignment system. The second chapter, coauthored with Professor YingHua He and Professor Jin-Tan Liu, examines the STEM gender gap in Taiwan's university admissions. Leveraging economy-wide data on Taiwan's centralized university admissions and a matching model, this paper decomposes the STEM gender gap into factors of both demand and supply sides. We find that either the demand factors, i.e., gendered preferences, or the supply factors, i.e., gender-specific labor market outcomes after graduation, contribute to a relatively small fraction of the overall STEM gender gap. Most of this gap results from the disproportionately low participation of female applicants in university entrance exams for STEM-related subjects, which are critical for admission to STEM majors. Counterfactual simulations show that some commonly proposed policies can be effective to improve female representation in STEM majors, particularly for the applicants who have taken STEM subject exams. Our findings underscore the importance of earlier-stage interventions, such as encouraging female students to build more STEM-related readiness before applying to university. The third chapter, collaborated with a group of researchers, uses data from centralized application and admissions systems in ten economies to document differences in gender representation among talented students applying to STEM majors. These ten settings are very different in size, economic development, culture, gender norms, and geographic location. We focus on students scoring in the top 10% of the university admission exams. While we find some significant variation in female representation among top 10% scorers, the gender gap in applications to STEM majors is remarkably stable across settings. The results indicate that closing gaps in academic performance is not enough to eliminate inequality in college trajectories between genders.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Social Sciences

Grantor

Rice University

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Sun, Jintao

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• He, YingHua
• Cunha, Flavio

• Empirical Market Design
• Education

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1911/118506

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.rice.edu:1911/118506