Juan Martín Pal es Candidato al PhD en Economía por Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), Magíster en Economía por la UNLP y Licenciado en Economía por la UBA. A partir de 2026 se incorpora como profesor en la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC). Ha sido investigador visitante en University of Pennsylvania e Investigador Junior del CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP. También se ha desempeñado como Secretario Técnico de la Revista Económica de la FCE-UNLP y ha sido consultor para el BID, el Banco Mundial y el Ministerio de Educación de la Nación. Sus investigaciones se centran en microeconomía aplicada, con foco en economía laboral, organización industrial y desarrollo económico. Sus trabajos estudian temas como educación, mercados laborales y desigualdad, utilizando herramientas empíricas y modelos estructurales. 

ABSTRACT: This paper studies the design of higher education policies targeted at improving the recruitment of public servants. I leverage the introduction of a policy in Chile that aimed to increase teacher quality by combining financial incentives and admission standards. Exploiting a sharp assignment rule for financial incentives eligibility, I estimate that, at the threshold, enrollment of high performing students at teacher colleges increased by 42%. For low-income students, two thirds of the increase is due to switching away from non-enrollment. The policy led to a 0.25SD increase in the scores at the college entrance exam, which translated into a 0.11SD increase in Teacher Value Added (TVA). I embed the reduced-form results into a demand and supply model of higher education that incorporates a novel method for solving discrete-continuous games in large markets. Alternative combinations of incentives and admission standards lead to increases of up to 6.6% in the test scores of students enrolled at teacher colleges, and up to 20% in TVA. Targeting the policy to low-income students yields further gains in TVA at no additional cost. To achieve similar gains, the expected wages of graduates from teacher colleges would need to increase by approximately 35%, highlighting the cost-effectiveness of the policy.

AUTOR: Juan Martín Pal (UC & TSE Human Capital Center)

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ORGANIZA: Departamento de Economía, Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y Revista Económica

CONTACTO: iie@econo.unlp.edu.ar