Lecture| May 12, 2017/3:30-5:00 p.m. |Room 102 in College of Economics

Speaker：Ma Guangrong

ABOUT MA GUANG-RONG
Ma Guangrong, who was a undergraduate from Southeast University in 2008, a visiting scholar at Duke University in 2011 and got the doctoral degree from the National Development Institute of Peking University in 2013, is an associate professor of the School of Finance in Renmin University of China. He has published more than 30 papers both in Chinese and English journals, such as American Economic Review, Journal of Comparative Economics, Social Sciences in China, Economic Research Journal, Managing World(Monthly) and The Journal of World Economy, hosted several research topics like the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing Social Science Fund and earned the awards-- Hong Yinxing economics award, Deng Ziji financial academic award, as well as the outstanding achievement award from the Ministry of education.

ABOUT THE LECTURE
This paper investigates the effect of class tracking on educational outcomes in higher education. A regression discontinuity design establishes evidence that there is no overall benefit for marginal students assigned to the high achieving track. Exploiting unique features of our data set, we are able to separate the components of the overall effect and show that longer instruction time significantly benefits a student, implying that exposure to less achieving peers produces negative influence. Our findings are robust to alternative specifications as well as alternative measure of educational outcomes. We find little evidence of heterogeneity in the effect of class tracking.