Cauê Dobbin

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2016 - 2017 Academic Year

Returns to Tertiary Education: Evidence From an Unintended Experiment in Brazil

Dobbin investigates the labor market payoffs to higher education in Brazil by leveraging the unintended effects of a policy targeting fraud in a national high-stakes high school exit exam. To prevent cheating, students are assigned one of four different examination books. While the only difference across groups is the order in which the questions are presented, some students are penalized since they randomly get easier questions later in the test. Dobbin observes striking differences in scores across examination groups, and subsequent differences in the rates of entrance to higher education.

Cauê Dobbin, Department of Economics

Cauê Dobbin is a PhD student in economics at Stanford University, with a research focus on the economics of education and its relationship with inequality and development. His work combines economic theory and big data to shed light on the most pressing issues of our time, such as student loans, migration restrictions, and affirmative action. Dobbin has taught a wide range of courses in economics at Stanford, which recognized him with an award for outstanding teaching in 2019. He holds a BA from the University of Brasilia and an MA from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, both in economics.

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