PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Rossiter, Jack AU - Abreh, Might Kojo AU - Ali, Aisha AU - Sandefur, Justin TI - The High Stakes of Bad Exams AID - 10.3368/jhr.0621-11739R1 DP - 2023 Jun 06 TA - Journal of Human Resources PG - 0621-11739R1 4099 - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2023/10/11/jhr.0621-11739R1.short 4100 - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2023/10/11/jhr.0621-11739R1.full AB - Each year two million secondary-school students across West Africa sit coordinated exams. Pass rates fluctuate enormously, fueling speculation about cheating and short-term policy changes. To investigate these hypotheses, we construct hybrid exams containing items spanning 2011-2019 and administer these to 4,380 students. Exam difficulty alone explains 80 percent of pass rate fluctuations in Ghana, while additional factors remain influential in Nigeria and elsewhere. Half of the candidates who failed mathematics in 2015 would have passed in 2019. Model based estimates imply that improving exam comparability would increase the Mincerian return to skills among secondary school graduates by 6 percentage points.