The impact of local supply of upper secondary field of study

This paper evaluates the impact on students’ educational and labour market trajectories of local supply variations in fields of upper secondary education in Sweden. It takes a broad approach and studies the overall, reduced form, effects on several short-, medium- and long-term outcomes. The results highlight the multidimensional impact of educational supply; expanding supply of one track increases its admission rates, but also leads to a redistribution of students across programs. Increased supply is furthermore associated with decreasing average school peer ability, but also with smaller class sizes, and a higher likelihood of getting into one’s top ranked program. There is no strong evidence of any long-term effects on the labour market outcomes of local youth – a finding that may reflect the multifaceted short-run impacts.