This research examines the effects of state laws banning access to in-state resident tuition for unauthorized immigrant students in the United States. These laws were implemented between 2005 and 2012. We evaluate the policy effects on (a) college enrollment, (b) school dropout rates of unauthorized immigrants, and (c) the enrollment of U.S. citizens in higher education. Multivariate triple-differences models are used. We find significant negative effects on the college attendance rates of unauthorized immigrants. Policies have primarily affected recent high school graduates. With regard to dropping out of school, we find no evidence of dynamic effects. Nor do we find evidence of benefits in college attendance for non-Hispanic, Hispanic, or Mexican naturalized citizens.

Peer effects in the context of higher education have lately received increased attention. Higher diversity in the composition of new cohorts of students, generated mainly in countries where public and institutional policies have enabled access to students from low socioeconomic conditions and races who unusually attend postsecondary education, make these effects even more relevant. This research estimates and analyzes the effect of peers’ academic performance and course composition by socioeconomic origin on students’ academic achievement at a private Colombian university between 2008 and 2019. The estimates, by Ordinary Least Squares and Multilevel models, support the existence of significant peer effects. There was a positive effect of peers’ performance on Calculus I academic results, principally of medium and high-performance peers, and a null effect of the socioeconomic level in Calculus I, but a significant effect in Communication Skills I, although with a limited impact. By introducing heterogeneities, it is evident that students perceived a greater benefit from performance improvements from peers who are in the same performance category or socioeconomic level. These results provide evidence of the existence, direction, and magnitude of peer effects in Colombian higher education. Additionally, they suggest that the most relevant characteristic of classmates is their academic performance and not their socioeconomic origin.

The objective of this paper is to examine the issue of expansionary policies during the pandemic in Mexico. To do so, we use a dynamic model of the interaction between Covid-19 and economic output. We find that expansionary policies are desirable but that they alone cannot prevent the acceleration of the pandemic. We also model supplementary policies, especially public health policies, and find that in their presence expansionary economic policies can put the economy on track while simultaneously addressing the pandemic. Our analysis’s implications are straightforward: countercyclical economic policies are desirable when there are other supplementary policies. A limitation of our analysis is that it is circumscribed to the Mexican context. The paper is a novel contribution to the burgeoning literature on Covid-19 in Mexico because it is the first which formally examines the issue of expansionary policies during the pandemic. We conclude that both expansionary policies and supplementary policies are needed to achieve a sustainable recovery.

Durante el último decenio en América Latina se ha extendido el uso de políticas de financiamiento como mecanismos de apoyo al ingreso a la educación superior. Así, para finales de 2014 el Gobierno de Colombia introduce el programa de subsidios Ser Pilo Paga (SPP) como una estrategia de fortalecimiento del acceso para estudiantes con alto rendimiento académico en condición de vulnerabilidad socioeconómica. A la fecha, la mayoría de las investigaciones revisadas en torno a este programa se han concentrado en asuntos de cobertura, asignación, desempeño académico y alcance educativo. Con ayuda de datos de precios de matrícula reconstruidos con registros documentales pecuniarios y técnicas paramétricas, y mediante una metodología de diferencias en diferencias, se aproxima su impacto en precios de matrícula en una muestra de 14 instituciones acreditadas en alta calidad de un total de 65 durante el periodo de 2015 a 2018. Los resultados aportan evidencia a favor de que el programa SPP aumentó los precios de matrículas de las universidades participantes en una media de 2,3 a 4,3 puntos porcentuales.