Birthplace Favoritism and Quality of Education

We investigated the long-term effects of birthplace favoritism by top-ranking politicians on the quality of education in Vietnam. We used over 1 million test scores from the 2009 and 2014 Vietnamese national university entrance examinations. We examined both the different timing of political terms and the total years of birthplace favoritism. Using the school fixed effects, we found that birthplace favoritism did not have any significant impacts, regardless of the timing and duration of such favoritism. We did not find evidence for such impacts in the distribution of test scores either. The results also suggest that national entrance examinations were unaffected by birthplace favoritism up to 2014.