中文摘要
日益增多的文献已证实重点大学的重要性。然而，对于中国——这个培养了全球每五个大学毕业生中就有一人的国家——获得精英教育的机会及其劳动力市场影响，我们仍知之甚少。中国的大学录取由单一考试决定，即全国普通高等学校招生统一考试（高考），政府为重点大学设定录取分数线。我们利用分数线附近的断点，考察成绩高于重点批次分数线对学生进入重点大学的机会以及毕业后工资结果的影响。通过采用手工收集的调查数据，我们发现，成绩高于分数线不仅提高了进入重点大学的概率，还提高了年轻人毕业后第一份工作的工资。我们还发现，刚过分数线的学生所拥有的同伴，其分数和社会网络均优于分数线以下学生的同伴；但这两组学生在大学期间对时间的使用是否存在差异，则不太清楚。
Abstract
A burgeoning literature has documented the importance of elite colleges. Yet, little is known about access to elite education and its labor market implications in China, a country that produces one in every five college graduates in the world. College admission in China is governed by a single exam – the national college entrance exam, and the government sets admission cutoff scores for elite colleges. We examine the impacts of scoring above the elite-tier cutoff on a student’s access to elite colleges and wage outcomes after graduation, using the discontinuity around the cutoff score. By employing hand-collected survey data, we find that scoring above the cutoff not only increases the chance of entering an elite college but also raises a young person’s first-job wages after graduation. We also find that those just above the cutoff have peers with higher scores and better social networks than those below the cutoff, but it is less clear whether the two groups use their time differently in college.