About

Esteban Aucejo is a Professor and Dean's Council Distinguished Scholar at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. He joined ASU after serving as an assistant professor at the London School of Economics. His academic background includes a bachelor's degree in economics from Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina, followed by a master's and a doctorate in economics from Duke University. His primary research focus is the economics of education, with a secondary interest in labor economics. His work has been published in leading scholarly journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Aucejo also serves as a research associate at the NBER and CEP, and is currently a managing editor at The Economic Journal. His research explores various aspects of education and labor markets, including affirmative action, racial disparities, teacher effectiveness, and the impact of COVID-19 on student experiences.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Economics
• Demography
• Geography
• Psychology
• Economic growth
• Management science
• Data science
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• Understanding Gaps in College Outcomes by First-Generation Status

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-08-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Information frictions significantly shape students' academic trajectories, but their differential impact across student backgrounds remains understudied.Using a novel panel survey capturing incoming students' subjective expectations and anonymized transcript data from Arizona State University, we first show that parental education strongly predicts educational success, even after controlling for demographics and measurable college preparation.First-generation students enter college less informed and with more uncertain beliefs, facing substantial challenges stemming from limited understanding and uncertainty about the higher education setting.A Bayesian expected utility maximization model demonstrates that higher uncertainty alone can sustain persistent achievement gaps.Empirically, students update their beliefs and make academic decisions consistent with the model's predictions.Finally, leveraging a natural experiment involving a targeted first-year experience program for academically marginal students, we demonstrate that cost-effective interventions can successfully reduce knowledge frictions, improve retention, and encourage beneficial early major switching.

  PublisherDOI

• Personalized Mentoring and Educational Equity: Experimental Evidence from a Primary-School RCT in China

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-11-07

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Understanding Gaps in College Outcomes by First-Generation Status

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Importance of Student-Teacher Matching: A Multidimensional Value-Added Approach

  The Review of Economics and Statistics · 2025-10-27

  article

  Abstract We propose a framework for value-added models that flexibly characterizes heterogeneous teacher productivity based on multidimensional student characteristics. We show that teacher effectiveness heavily depends on the specific attributes of their students. For example, the difference in value-added between well-matched and poorlymatched students for the average teacher is approximately 0.1 standard deviations in test scores. Notably, these matching effects are particularly pronounced among lowachieving students. In language arts, the standard deviation in teacher value-added is one-third larger for low-achieving students compared to high-achieving students.

  PublisherDOI

• Personalized Mentoring and Educational Equity: Experimental Evidence from a Primary-School RCT in China

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2025-11-07

  dataset1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The effect of feedback on student performance

  Journal of Public Economics · 2024-12-13 · 9 citations

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Assessing the Costs of Balancing College and Work Activities: The Gig Economy Meets Online Education

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• College Attrition and the Dynamics of Information Revelation

  Journal of Political Economy · 2024-08-05 · 16 citations

  article

  We examine how informational frictions impact schooling and work outcomes by estimating a dynamic structural model where individuals face uncertainty about their academic ability and productivity, which determine their schooling utility and wages. We account for different college types, majors, occupational search frictions, and work hours. Individuals learn from grades and wages, which may affect their choices. Removing informational frictions would increase graduation by 4.4 percentage points and by an additional 2 points without search frictions. Providing students with full information about their abilities would increase the college and white-collar wage premia while reducing the graduation gap by family income.

  PublisherDOI

• Assessing the Costs of Balancing College and Work Activities: The Gig Economy Meets Online Education

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-04-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Balancing the demands of work and schooling is a challenging task for an increasing number of students who have to pay their way through college and for workers who intend to upgrade their skills. However, flexible learning and working environments could play an important role in easing many frictions associated with performing both activities simultaneously. Using detailed (work and study effort) data - from a partnership between Arizona State University and Uber that allows eligible drivers to enroll in online college courses for free - we analyze how labor supply and study efforts respond to changes in labor market conditions and college activities/tasks. Our findings indicate that a 10% increase in average weekly online college activities reduces weekly time spent on the Uber platform by about 1%, indicating a low 'short run' opportunity cost of studying when working. We also show that study time is not particularly sensitive to changes in labor market conditions, where a 10% increase in average weekly pay reduces study hours by only 2%. Consistent with these results, we find that workers take advantage of their flexible schedules by changing their usual working hours when their college courses are more demanding. We do not find adverse effects of work hours on academic performance in this context, or of study hours on workplace performance (as measured by driver ratings or tips). Finally, the (elicited) value assigned to flexible working and educational formats is high among the students in our sample, who view online education as an important vehicle for increasing expected future income. Overall, this study underscores that combining flexible working and learning formats could constitute a suitable path for many (low-SES) students who work to afford an increasingly expensive college education and for workers aiming to improve their skill set.

  PublisherDOI

• College Attrition and the Dynamics of Information Revelation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Peter Arcidiacono

  71 shared

• Arnaud Maurel

  42 shared

• Tyler Ransom

  University of Oklahoma

  40 shared

• V. Joseph Hotz

  University of Chicago

  23 shared

• Teresa Romano

  18 shared

• Jane Cooley Fruehwirth

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  11 shared

• Kenneth I. Spenner

  Duke University

  11 shared

• Eric Taylor

  United States Fish and Wildlife Service

  9 shared

Labs

• Esteban Aucejo LabPI

Education

• B.A.

  Universidad de San Andrés

  2004

• M.A.

  Duke University

  2008

• Ph.D.

  Duke University

  2012

Awards & honors

• Dean's Council Distinguished Scholar and Professor