从区位选择到空间集聚的逻辑演绎——探索集聚经济的微观机理

现代区域经济学和空间经济学缺乏相应的微观基础,无法从微观主体的区位决策演绎到空间集聚.本文旨在探索个体选址行为到实现空间集聚的内在机制,并基于空间互补视角探讨了空间集聚的条件--自然的抑或人为造成的空间互补利益可以加速空间集聚,并使之在这一区位形成维持和锁定效应.     

Do schools compete with each other? Empirical evidence from Jakarta,Indonesia

This 2015 cross-sectional study tested whether the level of competition affected the national test scores of senior high schools in Jakarta. We measured the level of competition using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) and a gravity-based school competition index for the number of enrolled students. We found that schools’ national exam scores were positively associated with the level of competition. Furthermore, this competition was better explained by physical proximity than by administrative boundaries. However, public schools did not benefit from the competition.     

Private or public school advantage? Evidence from 40 countries using PISA 2012-Mathematics

It is known that in most countries, private school students outperform students in public schools in international assessments. However, the empirical literature recognizes that assessing the true effect of private school attendance requires addressing selection and sorting issues on both observabland unobservables. The existing empirical evidence on the private school effect mostly covers OECD and Latin American countries, with little evidence on other parts of the world. There is recent emerging country-specific evidence doubting the existence of a private school advantage. I use PISA 2012 data for Mathematics and two different methodologies to derive baseline and bias-corrected estimates of the private-dependent and independent school effect for 40 countries. A robust private school advantage is found only in a handful of countries. Public schools generally perform as well as private subsidized schools and outperform independent schools. Accounting for both peer effects and selection is necessary when evaluating school effectiveness, especially in the case of independent schools.     

Class or caste? A study on the role of caste and wealth status in school choice decision

There is a strong political opinion in India in favour of replacing caste based affirmative action with an economic class based one. We contribute to this debate by looking at the interaction of caste and wealth in school choice. We show that too rich and too poor parents behave in the same way irrespective of their caste identities—rich parents sending their children to private schools while poor parents choosing public schools for their children. The caste identity, we find, plays a role for the school choice decision made by the parents belonging to the economic middle class. Among the economic middle class parents, the ones from the privileged castes send their children to private schools, while the children of the parents from the disadvantaged castes are sent to public schools. The result is robust to alternative definitions of privileged and disadvantaged castes. For school quality choice, however, we find a monotonic relationship between wealth and school quality.     

Much Ado about Nothing? The Role of Primary School Catchment Areas For Ethnic School Segregation: Evidence From a Policy Reform

By the 2008/09 school year the federal state of North Rhine‐Westphalia (Germany) abolished binding school catchment areas in all municipalities. The reform has been controversial and it was feared that school choice would increase ethnic segregation. Using data on all primary schools we contribute to this debate by analyzing ethnic segregation before and after the reform. We discuss drawbacks of commonly used segregation indices and their interpretation as well as causality issues. Although there is an increase in segregation over the time period studied, our results show that segregation has not been affected by the policy reform.     

WHAT DETERMINES RELIGIOUS SCHOOL CHOICE? THEORY AND EVIDENCE FROM RURAL BANGLADESH

This paper looks at the determinants of school selection in rural Bangladesh, focusing on the choice between registered Islamic and non‐religious schools. Using a unique dataset on secondary school‐age children from rural Bangladesh, we find that madrasah enrolment falls as household income increases. At the same time, more religious households, and those that live further away from a non‐religious school are more likely to send their children to madrasahs. However, in contrast to the theory, we find that Islamic school demand does not respond to the average quality of schools in the locality.     

What determines post-compulsory academic studies? Evidence from the longitudinal survey of young people in England

We show that educational attainments at the end of the compulsory schooling stage are powerful predictors for post-compulsory educational choices in England. In particular, the single academic success indicator of achieving the Government’s gold standard in GCSE is able to predict virtually all the observed incidences of post-compulsory studies for academic qualifications. Notwithstanding, Two-Stage Least Squares estimation which exploits variations in school starting age induced by school entry rules suggests that the least-squares effect of achieving the gold standard in GCSEs on studying for academic qualifications is due to ability bias or reverse causation.