Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Marina Halac • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: Nov, 2025, Volume 93, Issue 6

Transparency and Percent Plans

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA18385
p. 2123-2157

Adam Kapor

Transparency versus opacity is an important dimension of college admission policy. Colleges may gain useful information from a holistic review of applicants' materials, but in doing so may contribute to uncertainty that discourages potential applicants with poor information. This paper investigates the impacts of admissions transparency in the context of Texas' Top Ten Percent Plan, using survey and administrative data from Texas and a model of college applications, admissions, enrollment, grades, and persistence. I estimate that two thirds of the plan's 9.1 point impact on top‐decile students' probability of attending a flagship university was due to information rather than mechanical effects. Students induced to enroll are more likely to come from low‐income high schools, and academically outperform the students that they displace. These effects would be larger if complemented by financial‐aid information, and are driven by transparency, not misalignment between the rules used for automatic and discretionary admissions.


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Supplemental Material

Supplement to "Transparency and Percent Plans"

Adam Kapor

This supplement contains material not found within the manuscript.

Supplement to "Transparency and Percent Plans"

Adam Kapor

The replication package for this paper is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15299342. The authors were granted an exemption to publish parts of their data because either access to these data is restricted or the authors do not have the right to republish them. However, the authors included in the package, on top of the codes and the parts of the data that are not subject to the exemption, a simulated or synthetic dataset that allows running the codes. The Journal checked the data and the codes for their ability to generate all tables and figures in the paper and approved online appendices. Whenever the available data allowed, the Journal also checked for their ability to reproduce the results. However, the synthetic/simulated data are not designed to produce the same results.