We study the effects of a reform that increased the stakes of the national exam at the end of high school for university enrolment in Spain. We find a negative effect of the reform on female test scores, driven by a worse performance in the exams for which the stakes increase the most, and driven by students expected to be top performers. The effect on test scores translates into significant changes in students' allocation to college: female enrolment in the most selective degrees declines, together with expected earnings.
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Caterina Calsamiglia is an ICREA Research Professor at IPEG. She got her PhD from the Department of Economics at Yale University. Her research focuses on market design and public policy design with a particular interest in education. Her work includes theoretical, experimental and empirical analysis. In the recent years she has been leading a research initiative to help develop Pentabilities in life-long learning processes. To assist the Pentabilities initiative she co-founded Pentabilities app, a tool to track analyse the development of your pentabilities.