Valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities

Existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. However, higher test scores could signal higher academic value-added or higher ability, more sought-after intakes. In our research, we show that both school value-added and student prior achievement – linked to the background of children in schools – affect households’ demand for education. In order to identify these effects, we improve the boundary discontinuity regression methodology by matching identical properties across admissions authority boundaries; by allowing for boundary effects and spatial trends; by re-weighting our data towards transactions that are closest to district boundaries; by eliminating boundaries that coincide with major geographical features; and by submitting our estimates to a number of novel falsification tests. Our results survive this battery of tests and show that a one-standard deviation change in either school average value-added or prior achievement raises prices by around 3%.     

Which school attributes matter? The influence of school district performance and demographic composition on property values

Increasing levels of segregation in American schools raises the question: do home buyers pay for test scores or demographic composition? This paper uses Connecticut panel data spanning eleven years from 1994 to 2004 to ascertain the relationship between property values and school district attributes, such as student test scores and the racial and ethnic composition of the student body. Town and census tract fixed effects are included to control for neighborhood unobservables. The effect of changes in school district attributes is also examined over a decade long time frame in order to focus on the effect of long-run changes, which are more likely to be capitalized into prices. The study finds strong evidence that increases in percent Hispanic have a negative effect on housing prices in Connecticut, but mixed evidence concerning the impact of test scores on property values. Student test scores also appear to have increased in importance for explaining housing prices in recent years, while the importance of percent Hispanic has declined. Finally, the study finds that estimates of property tax capitalization increase substantially when the analysis focuses on long run changes.     

Do liberal cities limit new housing development? Evidence from California

Traditional explanations for why some communities block new housing construction focus on incumbent home owner incentives to block entry. Local resident political ideology may also influence community permitting decisions. This paper uses city level panel data across California metropolitan areas from 2000 to 2008 to document that liberal cities grant fewer new housing permits than observationally similar cities located within the same metropolitan area. Cities experiencing a growth in their liberal voter share have a lower new housing permit growth rate.     

Closing schools in a shrinking district: Do student outcomes depend on which schools are closed?

In the last decade, many cities around the country have needed to close schools due to declining enrollments and low achievement. School closings raise concerns about the possible negative impacts on student achievement, neighborhoods, families, and teaching staff. This study examines an anonymous urban district that, faced with declining enrollment, chose to make student achievement a major criterion in determining which schools would be closed. The district targeted low-performing schools in its closure plan, and sought to move their students to higher-performing schools. We estimate the impact of school closures on student test scores and attendance rates by comparing the growth of these measures among students differentially affected by the closures. We use residential assignment to school as an instrument to address non-random sorting of students into new schools. We also statistically control for the contemporaneous effects of other reforms within the district. Results show that students displaced by school closures can experience adverse effects on test scores and attendance, but these effects can be minimized when students move to schools that are higher-performing (in value-added terms). Moreover, the negative effect on attendance disappears after the first year in the new school. Meanwhile, we find no adverse effects on students in the schools that are receiving the transferring students.     

教育资本化视角下“学区房”空间布局研究——以天津市中心城区为例

当前各地积极推行义务教育学校“学区”制,旨在破解择校难题,追求公平教育。已有研究与实践经验表明学区制背景下教育资源“资本化”现象确实存在,并带来教育资源的内生性,强化了“学区房”空间分布的不均衡。基于此,阐述“学区房”内涵以及基础教育资本化实证经验,结合天津市中心城区“学区房”空间分布特征,探讨“学区房”不均衡分布的溢出效应,进而提出改善“学区房”不均衡布局的对策。     

The impact of tax increment finance districts on localized real estate: Evidence from Chicago’s multifamily markets

Sales price indices for the Chicago multifamily real estate market are developed in order to examine the influence that designating an area a tax increment financing district (TIF) has on the real property appreciation rates. Chicago is a community with a long history of TIF investment and a patchwork of more than 130 established TIF districts, comprising over 29 percent of the city’s total acreage and approximately 19 percent of the total real property tax base. Municipal governments across the country have come under increased pressure to provide quantifiable evidence that the tools they employ in the name of economic development have the potential to increase private investment. The results indicate that properties located within a designated TIF district exhibit higher rates of appreciation after the area is designated a qualifying TIF district when compared to those properties selling outside TIF districts, and when compared to properties that sell within TIF district boundaries prior to designation. The findings provide support for the hypothesis that TIF policy impacts property values through increased investment.     

Wages and prices: Are workers fully compensated for cost of living differences?

This paper investigates the equilibrium relationship between wages and prices across labor markets. Of central interest is the extent to which workers receive higher wages to compensate for differences in the cost of living. According to the spatial equilibrium hypothesis, the utility of homogenous workers should be equal across labor markets. This implies that controlling for amenity differences across areas, the elasticity between wages and the general price level across areas should equal one, at least under certain conditions. I test this hypothesis and find that the predicted relationship holds when housing prices are measured by rents and the general price level is instrumented to account for measurement error. When housing prices are measured by housing values, however, the wage-price elasticity is significantly less than one, even using instrumental variables. Rents reflect the price paid for housing per unit of time and are arguably the superior measure. Thus, findings in this essay provide support for the full compensation hypothesis. These findings also have important implications for researchers estimating the implicit prices of amenities or ranking the quality of life across areas.     

Does class matter more than school? Evidence from a multilevel statistical analysis on Italian junior secondary school students

This paper assesses the differences in educational attainments between students across classes and schools they are grouped by, in the context of Italian educational system. The purpose is to identify a relationship between pupils' reading test scores and students' characteristics, stratifying for classes, schools and geographical areas. The dataset contains detailed information about more than 500,000 students at the first year of junior secondary school in the year 2012/2013. By means of multilevel linear models, it is possible to estimate statistically significant school and class effects, after adjusting for pupil's characteristics, including prior achievement. The results show that school and class effects are very heterogeneous across macro-areas (Northern, Central and Southern Italy), and that there are substantial discrepancies between and within schools; overall, class effects on achievement tend to be larger than school ones.     

The effect of a large expansion of pre-primary school facilities on preschool attendance and maternal employment

We provide evidence on the impact of a large-scale construction of pre-primary school facilities in Argentina. We estimate the causal impact of the program on pre-primary school attendance and maternal labor supply. Identification relies on a differences-in-differences strategy where we combine differences across regions in the number of facilities built with differences in exposure across cohorts induced by the timing of the program. We find a sizeable impact of the program on pre-primary school participation among children aged between 3 and 5. In fact, we cannot reject the null hypothesis of a full take-up of newly constructed places. In addition, we find that the implicit childcare subsidy induced by the program appears to increases maternal employment.     

Local public goods and the demand for high-income municipalities

Affluent towns often deliver high-quality public services to their residents. I estimate the willingness to pay to live in a high-income suburb, above and beyond the demand of wealthy neighbors, by measuring changes in housing prices across city–suburban borders as the income disparity between the two municipalities changes over time. I find that a $10,000 increase in town-level median income is associated with a seven percent increase in housing values at the border. The estimated demand for high-income municipalities is primarily driven by school quality and lower property tax rates.     

Using DEA for measuring teachers’ performance and the impact on students’ outcomes: evidence for Spain

This research contributes to the ongoing debate about differences in teachers’ performance. We introduce a new methodology that combines production frontier and impact evaluation insights that allows using DEA as an identification strategy of a treatment with high and low quality teachers within schools to assess their performance. We use a unique database of primary schools in Spain that, for every school, supplies information on two classrooms at 4th grade where students and teachers were randomly assigned into the two classrooms. We find considerable differences in teachers’ efficiency across schools with significant effects on students’ achievement. In line with previous findings, we find that neither teacher experience nor academic training explains teachers’ efficiency. Conversely, being a female teacher, having worked five or more years in the same school or having smaller class sizes positively affects the performance of teachers.     

At the temporary-permanent interface: Overcoming knowledge boundaries with boundary objects

There is no shortage of literature on managing complex projects. However, we lack an understanding of projects in which the complexity goes beyond technical, financial and time-related challenges. We report on two Nordic business school accreditation projects, where the major management challenge is the knowledge boundaries institutionalized deep into the ethos of the schools. We focus on the project team’s use of boundary objects – a communication device across social groups – to expose and overcome knowledge boundaries materializing at temporary-permanent interface. We identify three progressively more challenging boundary object uses: informative, interactive and integrative. Consequently, we suggest a dynamic approach to boundary objects wherein their use evolves throughout the project life span as a consequence of the lived “in situ” experiences.     

Mandatory summer school and student achievement

Using administrative data from a large school district, I exploit the fact that students are mandated to attend summer school based on a discontinuous function of their score on year-end exams to identify the effect of summer school attendance on achievement. I find an average effect of about .12 standard deviations for both math and reading achievement, an effect size on the low end of the range of prior estimates. These averages mask considerable heterogeneity, however, with effect size estimates ranging from just below zero to one-quarter of a standard deviation. The estimates on the upper end of the range presented here suggest that summer school may be a more cost-effective way of raising student achievement scores than class-size reductions.     

Racial Fractionalization and School Performance

The literature on racial “peer effects” suggests that diversity improves at least some students' school performance. However, a literature in economic development posits that diversity may negatively affect school performance by undermining the efficient provision of education. This article empirically tests this claim, which we call the “public goods channel,” by examining the relationship between racial diversity and student performance in Ohio's school districts. We find that moving from a completely homogenous school district to one in which two racial groups have equal population shares is associated with a 7–17.5 percentage point decline in the passage rate on the state math exam, holding per pupil spending across districts constant. These results suggest that racial diversity is negatively associated with school performance but that the public goods channel is not responsible for this relationship.     

Do Smaller Classes Always Improve Students’ Long‐run Outcomes?

We exploit the strict class size rule in Norway and matched individual and school register information for 1982–2011 to estimate long‐run causal effects on income and educational attainment. Contrary to recent evidence from the US and Sweden, we do not find any significant average effect on long‐run outcomes of reduced class size. We further use the large register data set and quasi‐experimental strategy to estimate whether the class size effect depends on external conditions facing students and schools, such as teacher quality, extent of upper secondary school choice, school district size, local fiscal constraints and labour market conditions. Overall, we find that the class size effect does not depend on these factors measured at the school district level. The absence of class size effects on long‐run outcomes in Norway is consistent with earlier findings for short‐run outcomes, using comparable data and empirical strategies.     

High school completion and future youth unemployment: new evidence from High School and Beyond

In this paper, I provide new evidence from High School and Beyond (HSB) on the effects of compulsory attendance on high school completion and future youth unemployment. I develop Bayesian estimation approaches to the simultaneous equation model with ordered probit and two‐limit censored regression and the bivariate duration model, accounting for the heterogeneity in returns to education and the nonlinearity in the effects of compulsory attendance. I find substantial variability in returns to education across schools and evidence of diminishing marginal effects of compulsory attendance on high school completion. The simulation results suggest that increasing the compulsory attendance age raises the probability of completing high school and reduces the proportion of time the individuals are unemployed. These effects are much more pronounced for disadvantaged students but less pronounced for advantaged students, suggesting the potential effects of compulsory attendance on reducing the inequality in education and employment. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Teacher qualifications and student achievement in urban elementary schools

Teacher quality is a key element of student academic success, but few specific teacher characteristics influence classroom outcomes. This research examines whether teacher licensure test scores and other teacher attributes affect elementary student achievement. The results are based on longitudinal student-level data from Los Angeles. California requires three types of teacher licensure tests as part of the teacher certification process; a general knowledge test, a subject area test (single subject for secondary teachers and multiple subject for elementary teachers), and a reading pedagogy test for elementary school teachers. The student achievement analysis uses a value-added approach that adjusts for both student and teacher fixed effects. The results show large differences in teacher quality across the school district, but measured teacher characteristics explain little of the difference. Teacher licensure test scores are unrelated to teacher success in the classroom. Similarly, student achievement is unaffected by whether classroom teachers have advanced degrees. Student achievement increases with teacher experience, but the linkage is weak and largely reflects poor outcomes for teachers during their first year or two in the classroom.     

Household Shocks and Education Investments in Madagascar

This paper investigates the impact of exogenous shocks to household income, assets and labour supply on children's school attendance in Madagascar. The analysis uses a unique data set with 10 years of recall data on school attendance and household shocks. We find that the probability of a child dropping out of school increases significantly when the household experiences an illness, death or asset shock. We propose a test to distinguish whether the impact of shocks on school attendance can be attributed to credit constraints, labour market rigidities, or a combination of the two. The results suggest that credit constraints, rather than labour market rigidities, explain the inability of households in Madagascar to keep their children in school during times of economic stress.     

Efficiency and Seasonality in the UK Housing Market, 1991–2001*

This paper considers the informational efficiency of the UK owner‐occupied housing market over the period 1991–2001. Original small‐area, monthly, quality‐adjusted house price index series are developed from raw housing transaction observations for a number of UK counties and cities. These series are then tested in an autoregressive setting for characteristics indicative of weak market efficiency and seasonality. The major conclusion drawn is that there exists little evidence to support notions of inefficiency in these markets over the period considered.     

Negative equity and wages

We examine the relationship between housing equity and wage earnings using nine waves of the national American Housing Survey from 1985 to 2003. Employing a rich set of time and place controls, a synthetic mortgage instrumental variable strategy, and a first difference estimator we find that people underwater on their mortgage command a significantly lower wage than other homeowners. The finding survives a number of robustness checks for reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity. We also explore other determinants of “house lock” including loss aversion, a low existing mortgage interest rate and property tax assessment caps, but do not find these factors mitigate the effect of negative equity on wages.