About me
I am Juan Fuentes, a PhD candidate in Economics at Boston College.
My research lies at the intersection of Empirical Industrial Organization and the Economics of Education.
In my Job Market Paper I quantify the welfare impact of class-rank admissions policies in higher education.
I will be on the 2025 – 26 job market.
Job Market Paper
Who Wins with Class-Rank College Admissions?
Abstract
Class-rank policies increase college admission chances for students who perform better than their peers within their high school. These policies aim to promote equity while avoiding the legal and political challenges of affirmative action. I study the effects of Chile’s Relative Ranking rule, introduced in 2013, which boosted admission scores for top students in each high school. I use administrative data on the universe of applicants from 2012 to 2014, leverage variation pre- and post-policy, and estimate a structural model of college choice with endogenous consideration sets and graduation outcomes. This framework allows me to capture how the policy changed admission scores and reshaped student application choices. On average, student welfare rose by 0.05 km measured as willingness to travel. This effect hides important heterogeneity. I find that the rule shifted 13% of applicants into more-preferred programs. Of these students, 90% were from public and voucher schools and 60% were women. Private school students and men were displaced to less preferred alternatives and showed lower graduation rates. Counterfactuals show that, compared to affirmative action, the class-rank rule delivers higher welfare for public school students and smaller reductions in graduation rates.