摘要：This paper uses administrative longitudinal micro data on the universe of Junior
High school students in Uruguay to measure the effect of grade failure on
students' subsequent school outcomes. Exploiting the discontinuity induced by a
rule establishing automatic grade failure for pupils missing more than 25 days,
I show that grade failure leads to substantial drop-out and lower educational
attainment even after 4 to 5 years since the time when failure first occurred.
Complementary evidence based on a change in the regime of grade promotion leads
to very similar conclusions, suggesting that non-random sorting around the
discontinuity point is unlikely to drive my results
关键词：grade retention, school drop-out, regression discontinuity, sorting
