The multi-billion-dollar university rankings industry purports to offer insights into the quality of institutions, but the extent to which it does so has consistently been refuted. Critics argue that problematic proxies, composite indexing, homogenising effects, and several other issues make them both unscientific and neo-colonial. This article…

In this dissertation, I present an examination of the economics of education through three chapters. In the first paper, I study the overrepresentation of elite university graduates in senior positions in public administration. Using rich administrative data from Chile, I employ a stacked fuzzy regression discontinuity design to estimate the…

The widespread popularity of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within universities has influenced various changes in the higher education sector, affecting the operations of higher education institutions in many developed and developing countries. Using institutional theory, this study explores the connection between university CSR and…

The strong correlation between having graduated from a selective college and success in the labor market has been robustly observed in many countries. There are two major explanations for this finding. One claims that graduating from a selective college assures success in the labor market in a causal sense due to better education, a better alumni…