Phnom Penh. There, a firm contracted for this purpose “scored” them, using the responses and the set of weights that reflected how well each characteristic predicted the likelihood of school dropout in the nationwide household survey. The formula used was the same for every school and, once calculated, the scores could not be revised.<sup>7</sup> Finally, within every CSP school, all applicants were ranked by the score, regardless of which feeder school they came from. In “large” CSP schools, with total enrollment above 200, 50 students with the lowest value of the score were then offered a scholarship for 7<sup>th</sup> , 8<sup>th</sup> , and 9<sup>th</sup> grade; in “small” CSP schools, with total enrollment below 200 students, 30 students with the lowest value of the score were offered the scholarship.8 In total, just over 3800 scholarships were offered in the year of the program we study.<sup>9</sup> The list of students offered scholarships was then posted in each CSP school, as well as in the corresponding feeder schools.

Once children had been selected to receive a CSP scholarship, their families received the cash award three times a year. Payments were made at widely attended school ceremonies, with the school principal publicly handing over the cash to parents. The majority of participants at these school ceremonies were CSP recipients. During the ceremonies, principals stressed the importance of secondary school education, and the responsibilities that parents had to ensure that their children were enrolled in school, attended regularly, and were successful students. Also, parents were told that they were meant to spend the CSP award on the schooling of the selected children. Although no attempt was made to monitor

> 7 Scholarship recipients and their scores were posted at feeder schools and at CSP schools. There was a complaint mechanism whereby community members could appeal the decisions made on the basis of the score—either because they believed that an applicant had mis-represented their characteristics on the form, or because they believed an applicant was poorer (or less poor) than indicated by the score. In practice, however, less than 1 percent of applicants appealed the decisions, and the recipient status of even fewer was revised as a result of a complaint. 8 In practice, within every large school, the 25 students with the lowest dropout score were offered a scholarship of $60, and the 25 students with the next lowest scores were offered a scholarship of $45; in small schools, the comparable numbers were 15 students with scholarships of $60, and 15 with scholarships of $45. We do not focus on this distinction in this paper. Rather, we compare applicants who were offered a scholarship, regardless of the amount, with others that were not. Because the identification strategy is regression-discontinuity, we are implicitly comparing applicants who were offered a $45 scholarship, with those who were offered no scholarship at all. Students who were offered a $60 scholarship help estimate the control function that relates enrollment to the dropout score.

9 Occasionally, there were tied scores at the cut-off. In these cases, all applicants with the tied score at the cut-off were offered the scholarships.

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