Teachers’ versus parental choice and the tracking distribution of students: a natural experiment

This article studies the secondary school track choice and considers to what extent parents’ and teachers’ assessment of students diverge. We take advantage of a reform in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in 2006. The reform replaced parents’ choice about their children’s secondary school type by a binding teacher recommendation. Our data comprise class-level information on all public primary schools in the state. We find that teachers tend to recommend higher school types than parents. However, more precise analysis shows that this effect can be limited to districts with above average proportion of immigrants.     

Incentives and teacher effort

Few would contest that teachers are a very important determinant of how much students learn in school, and how to improve teacher performance has been the focus of lively policy debate in both rich and poor countries. This paper examines how teacher incentives, both pecuniary and non‐pecuniary, correlate with teacher effort. Using school survey data from Lao PDR, we estimate measures of teacher effort, including the number of hours that teachers spend preparing for classes and teacher provision of private tutoring outside of class hours, which are not the typical measures used in previous research. Estimation results fit well under the standard labour supply framework and indicate that greater teacher effort is associated with non‐pecuniary incentives such as more teacher autonomy over teaching materials and monitoring as measured by the existence of an active parent – teacher association and the ability of school principals to dismiss teachers. Methodologically, this paper provides a detailed derivation of a simultaneous OLS‐probit model with school random effects that can jointly estimate teacher work hours and tutoring provision.     

BEYOND TEST SCORES: THE IMPACT OF BLACK TEACHER ROLE MODELS ON RIGOROUS MATH TAKING

Rigorous math has a positive impact on ultimate educational attainment and earnings, but black high school students enroll in advanced math classes at low rates. Curriculum choice is determined by prior academic achievement and expectations for future schooling, both of which can be influenced by role models. This article finds that increasing the percentage of math teachers who are black has a nontrivial, positive impact on the likelihood that a black geometry student will enroll in a subsequent rigorous math course. This race-based role model effect occurs only for opposite-sex student/teacher matches.     

The effects of cognitive ability and high school quality on college entry decisions: nonparametric estimation of parameters of interest

The decisions to attend college are analysed and nonparametric predictions compared to those obtained from the widely used logit model. The impacts of measured cognitive ability and proxies for high school quality on the decisions to attend college are examined for a sample of white and black males and females from the USA. Two different parameters of interest which isolate the effects of ability and high school quality on college entry decisions are described and estimated by ‘integrating out’ the effect of other covariates. It is found that measured cognitive ability is an extremely important determinant of college entry for all race and gender groups. At the same point in the ability distribution, blacks are more likely to select into college than whites, and females more likely than males of the same racial group. Proxies for high school quality such as teacher education, student teacher ratios, school enrolment and library size are shown to have little or no effects on the likelihood of college entry for all race and gender groups. Further, predictions obtained from the flexible nonparametric analysis are found to be quite similar to those obtained from the logit model, suggesting that simpler fully parametric binary choice models perform quite well as modelling college entry decisions.     

DOES IMPROVING SCHOOL QUALITY REDUCE THE PROBABILITY OF UNEMPLOYMENT?

The authors investigate the relationship between high school quality and the probability of extended unemployment among noncollege-bound men during three periods: the first two years, two to four years, and seven to nine years after high school. They find that larger high schools and schools with lower pupil–teacher ratios tend to decrease the probability of being unemployed for noncollege-bound men in the period shortly after high school graduation. However, no effect is found of high school quality on unemployment probabilities approximately a decade after high school completion. (JEL I21 , J64 )     

Entry into the Schooling Market: How is the Behaviour of Private Suppliers Influenced by Public Sector Decisions?

This research examines the location choice of private schools entering the California schooling market in 1979–80. We find that entrants are more likely to locate in public school districts with lower levels of per–pupil expenditure and higher fractions of public school students who reside in low–income households. In addition, we provide evidence of differences in the responsiveness of different types of private schools to the underlying conditions. Also, in comparing our results to those of previous research, we find that the determinants of the location choices of entrants appear to be the same as the determinants of the location pattern of incumbent private schools.     

Economies of scale,school violence and the optimal size of schools

This article argues that policy in relation to education has relied too extensively on the more easily measured costs of production to support a common conclusion of economies of scale in school and/or district size. It argues that there are external costs that increase with size but that can be measured less easily that offset this case. This would imply that the tendency within the education profession to advocate ever-larger school sizes is premature at best. To make the case, it models the choice of school size to emphasize that costs, such as school violence, born by both students and their parents but not (necessarily) by education administrators may result in school sizes that are too big from the perspective of school users. The second and third parts of the article introduces evidence to suggest that school violence is one of these external costs.     

LOST IN TRANSLATION? TEACHER TRAINING AND OUTCOMES IN HIGH SCHOOL ECONOMICS CLASSES

Using data from a 2006 survey of California high school economics classes, we assess the effects of teacher characteristics on student achievement. We estimate value‐added models of outcomes on multiple choice and essay exams, with matched classroom pairs for each teacher enabling random‐effects and fixed‐effects estimation. The results show a substantial impact of specialized teacher experience and college‐level coursework in economics. However, the latter is associated with higher scores on the multiple‐choice test and lower scores on the essay test, suggesting that a portion of teachers' content knowledge may be “lost in translation” when conveyed to their students. (JEL A21, I21)     

The demand for primary schooling in Madagascar: Price,quality, and the choice between public and private providers

We estimate a discrete choice model of primary schooling and simulate policy alternatives for rural Madagascar. Among school quality factors, the results highlight the negative impacts on schooling demand of poor facility quality and the use of multigrade teaching (several grades being taught simultaneously by one teacher) in public schools. Simulations indicate the feasibility of reducing multigrade in public schools by adding teachers and classrooms, a policy that would lead to modest improvements in overall enrollments and would disproportionately benefit poor children. Given much higher price elasticities for poorer households, raising school fees to cover some of the additional costs would strongly counteract these favorable distributional outcomes. An alternative policy of consolidation of primary schools combined with multigrade reduction or other quality improvements is likely to be ineffective because of the strongly negative impact of distance to school.     

Teacher unions, teacher pay and student performance in India: A pupil fixed effects approach

This paper examines the relationship between teacher unionization, student achievement and teachers' pay using a cross-section of data from private schools in India. We use differences in student mark across subjects to identify within-pupil variation in achievement and find that union membership of the teacher is associated with reduced pupil achievement. We find no evidence this could be due to the unobservables not controlled for by this procedure. A school fixed effects equation of teacher pay shows that union membership raises pay and in this case too we find that remaining unobservables are unlikely to explain this outcome. We discuss the policy implications of the findings and show that the effectiveness of teacher credentials in improving teacher performance is linked to unionization.     

Are foreign investors attracted to weak environmental regulations? Evaluating the evidence from China

At the center of the pollution haven debate is the claim that foreign investors from industrial countries are attracted to weak environment regulations in developing countries. Some recent location choice studies have found evidence of this attraction, but only for inward FDI in industrial countries. The few studies of inward FDI in developing countries have been hampered by weak measures of environmental stringency and by insufficient data to estimate variation in firm response by pollution intensity. This paper tests for pollution haven behavior by estimating the determinants of location choice for equity joint ventures (EJVs) in China. Beginning with a theoretical framework of firm production and abatement decisions, we derive and estimate a location choice model using data on a sample of EJV projects, Chinese effective levies on water pollution, and Chinese industrial pollution intensity. Results show EJVs in highly-polluting industries funded through Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan are attracted by weak environmental standards. In contrast, EJVs funded from non-ethnically Chinese sources are not significantly attracted by weak standards, regardless of the pollution intensity of the industry. These findings are consistent with pollution haven behavior, but not by investors from high income countries and only in industries that are highly polluting. Further investigation into differences in technology between industrial and developing country investors might shed new light on this debate.     

The impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship skills and motivation

This paper analyzes the impact of a leading entrepreneurship education program on college students’ entrepreneurship skills and motivation using an instrumental variables approach in a difference-in-differences framework. We exploit that the program was offered to students at one location of a school but not at another location of the same school. Location choice (and thereby treatment) is instrumented by the relative distance of locations to parents’ place of residence. The results show that the program does not have the intended effects: the effect on students’ self-assessed entrepreneurial skills is insignificant and the effect on the intention to become an entrepreneur is even negative.     

义务教育阶段教师资源均衡配置的经济因素分析——以广西M县为例

城乡教师资源配置不均衡是中国义务教育阶段中的突出难题。农村中小学教师资源配置与城区相比存在巨大差异,严重影响到教育均衡发展。以广西M县为例,通过对影响教师资源配置问题进行实证分析,采取有针对性措施促进教师资源在城乡间的均衡配置。     

Environmental regulation and firm location choice in China

How may environmental regulation affect firm location choice? While this question has generated great research interest from high-standard, industrial economies, in this article we turn the spotlight to low-standard, developing countries and use China’s Census of Manufactures data during 2003–2008 to explore how firms with different ownership, during different policy regimes as well as from different industries may respond to environmental regulations in different ways. Results show environmental stringency has a positive effect on state-owned enterprises’ location choice during 2003–2005, but the effect becomes insignificant during 2006–2008. Private-owned enterprises, foreign-owned enterprises and collective-owned enterprises are more likely to enter areas with less stringent environmental regulations during 2003–2005. However, this pattern is reversed for the period of 2006–2008. Furthermore, the above relationships are more pronounced for firms in polluting industries.     

The effect of school capital investments on local housing markets and household sorting in California

In this paper, I investigate what effect school capital investments have on housing values and household location choice in the context of the Tiebout model. This research identifies an exogenous variation in school capital investments by exploiting the lottery allocation of entitlement to an interest-free construction bond among districts in California. Although the lottery is exogenous, additional non-lottery allocation complicates identification. This paper develops an empirical model based on sample selection methods in order to create a counterfactual state in which additional non-lottery allocation would not have existed. I find that receiving the interest-free construction bond increases school capital expenditure and housing values at the district level. I view the increase in housing values as the capitalization of school capital investments. I find little evidence for the effect of the interest-free construction bond on household sorting and student’s academic outcomes.     

THE TIME LAG IN ANNUAL HOUSEHOLD-BASED INCOME MEASURES: ASSESSING AND CORRECTING THE BIAS

Annual income data are typically provided with a time lag. This article reviews several ways of dealing with this time lag in the construction of annual household-based income measures for individual economic well-being. It also proposes an alternative method that yields better estimates for equivalized household income, especially in the case of household composition change. Next, the two most commonly applied income measures are compared to this alternative measure with empirical income data from the European Community Household Panel. This comparison reveals that ignoring the time lag and household changes leads to substantial bias in income and poverty estimates and to erroneous conclusions about the determinants of poverty entry. The evidence in this article will be useful to researchers who want to make a well-informed choice between different annual income measures.     

How do school ‘report cards’ affect school choice decisions?

Abstract. We estimate the effect of information about school achievement that is disseminated to the public through websites and school ‘report cards’ on school choice decisions. We find that students are more likely to leave their school when public information reveals poor school‐level performance. Some parents’ school choice decisions respond to information soon after it becomes available. Others, including non‐English‐speaking parents, alter their school choice decisions only in response to information that has been disseminated widely and discussed in the media. Parents in low‐income neighbourhoods are most likely to alter their school choice decisions in response to new information. JEL classification: I21, D83     

城市居民对居住区位的偏好及其区位选择的实证研究

利用详实的社会调查数据,考察了我国城市居民对居住区位的偏好和支付意愿,以及居民实际的区位选择。首先对影响居民对居住区位支付意愿高低(即支付意愿梯度)的因素进行了理论分析,分析了因素之间的相关关系,并探讨了研究支付意愿与区位选择差异性的方法。在理论分析基础上,建立了支付意愿梯度模型和区位选择模型,利用北京、上海、广州、武汉和重庆五城市的调研数据对模型参数进行了估计。结果显示,高收入群体仍倾向于居住在距离市中心偏近的位置,工作地点、对环境的偏好、城市规模和郊区基础设施完善程度都会从各种方面影响支付意愿的梯度值。市场力量已经在居住区位资源的配置中发挥重要作用,但存量住房流动性低和一部分居民的融资能力不足仍阻碍了其自由的区位选择。     

Inefficient Education Spending in Public School Districts: A Case for Consolidation?

This article estimates scale economies for Arkansas school districts. Large economies of scale exist in teacher salary and supply costs, as well as total costs. The results suggest that districts, especially rural districts, would experience measurable cost savings from consolidation. The authors simulate a hypothetical rural school district consolidation to obtain cost-saving estimates from consolidation. Simulations indicate that districts could save an average of 34% in average variable costs. At the state level, consolidation of rural districts in Arkansas could annually save $40 million. However, consolidation of school districts may increase various implicit costs to students and local communities. (JEL I22 , I28 )     

Corrigendum to “School choice: An experimental study” [J. Econ. Theory 127 (1) (2006) 202-231]

We correct an inconsistency in the efficiency comparison reported in [Y. Chen, T. Sönmez, School choice: An experimental study, J. Econ. Theory 127 (1) (2006) 202-231]. The efficiency comparison of the three school choice mechanisms in our paper is based on recombinant estimation with an identical set of 10 tie-breakers, while the statistics reported in Table 7 is computed using 14,400 tie-breakers.