DO PRIVATE TUTORS ENHANCE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ABILITY? REGRESSION DISCONTINUITY EVIDENCE FROM A POLICY EXPERIMENT IN INDIA

Empirical evidence has shown that returns to English language ability are substantial in India. Research has also focused on the impact of private tutoring in the context of developing economies to find evidence that remedial teaching leads to better student achievement and higher test scores. In this paper I analyze whether private tutoring helps in developing English language ability. Simple OLS estimates suggest statistically significant effects but estimated coefficients are rather small at 0.2 percentage points. Presence of confounders and selection bias may potentially understate the true effects of private tutoring on English language ability. To address this issue, I exploit a unique policy experiment in India in a regression discontinuity framework to identify cohorts eligible for private tutoring and compare their outcomes to the ineligible. I use this potentially exogenous policy variation as an instrument for private tutoring and find significant increases in English language ability estimated at 16 percentage points which is much larger than the simple OLS effects. Since standard academic curriculum is not directed towards improving foreign language ability, private tutoring as an input in the education production function seems to offer high marginal returns. From a policy perspective, this implies that private tutoring should be encouraged for enhancing English ability even though there are concerns that this provides disincentives for teachers to teach in school.     

Parental occupation and children’s school outcomes in math.

We investigate the relationship between math attitude and students’ math scores using data obtained from PISA 2012 and a 2SLS model. Math attitude is approximated by an indicator that takes into account intangible (parental attitude, student instrumental motivation and student math anxiety) and tangible (parental help in math homework) factors. The presence of one family member in a math-related career is our instrumental variable. We find that an increase of one standard deviation in math attitude increases the student score by approximately 30 points, a relevant effect since 40 points is the equivalent of one year of schooling.     

Mother's education and child development: Evidence from the compulsory school reform in China

This paper investigates the causal impact of mother's schooling on various outcomes of adolescent development by exploiting the temporal and geographical variations in the enforcement of compulsory schooling laws in China. Using data from China Family Panel Studies, we find that mother's education increases adolescents’ school enrollment, math test scores, college aspiration, and internal locus of control related to education. Mother's education also improves adolescent mental health status and reduces the incidence of underweight. We also find considerable gender heterogeneity in the effects of mother's education. The results further indicate that mother's education leads to an increase in family resources for children and an improvement in maternal mental health and parenting, which we interpret as potential mechanisms behind our findings.     

On the peer effects of star students

We estimate the effect that star students have on their siblings’ learning outcomes, measured by their high school grade point average (GPA) and their math grades. To this end, we couple administrative school data on grades with an unusual natural experiment in Peru that generates exogenous variation in the presence of star students at home. We find that star students increase their siblings’ GPA by 0.33 SDs and their math grades by 0.22 SDs. The effect size is inversely related to number of siblings, suggesting that the remaining siblings act as substitutes for the star student.     

How important are school principals in the production of student achievement?

As school leaders, principals can influence student achievement in a number of ways, such as hiring and firing of teachers, monitoring instruction and maintaining student discipline, among many others. We measure the effect of individual principals on gains in math and reading achievement between grades 4 and 7 using a value‐added framework. We estimate that a one standard deviation improvement in principal quality can boost student performance by 0.289 to 0.408 standard deviations in reading and math, while the principal at the 75th percentile improves scores by 0.170 to 0.193 relative to the median principal. Our results imply that isolating the most effective principals and allocating them accordingly between schools can have a significant positive effect on reducing achievement gaps.     

Measuring the incentives to learn in Colombia using new quantile regression approaches

This paper employs newly developed quantile regression techniques to investigate a policy that could differentially affect students' performance. The Colombian vouchers were assigned using lotteries, and were renewable as long as the students maintained satisfactory academic progress. This second aspect of the program may provide incentives for low attainment students to work harder. The evidence supports the hypothesis that incentives could account for the impact of the vouchers, including lower repetition rate. The effect of the vouchers is largest in the lower tail of the educational attainment distribution, a possibility that was conjectured by others, but has not yet been confirmed empirically. The evidence suggests that the incentive effect of the program increases weak students' test scores by at least 0.1 standard deviations, roughly the score gain associated to a half year of school learning.     

The implications of private tutoring on the school education in LDCs

In many LDCs, we observe that the public school teachers receive low wages, expend less than their full effort at school, and provide private tutoring to the students for a fee. To capture this institutional arrangement, we develop a theoretical model which shows that in comparison with ‘no-tutoring’, ‘tutoring’ is welfare reducing for all students in the economy. However, if the government considers only the students in the public system, then ‘tutoring’ can be welfare improving. In that case, the government would set a lower tax rate to pay wages to the teachers and let them provide tutoring to the students for a fee.     

Spatial Heterogeneity of Willingness to Pay for Forest Management

The paper investigates the spatial heterogeneity of public’s preferences for the implementation of a new country-wide forest management and protection program in Poland. Spatial econometric methods and high resolution geographical information system data related to forest characteristics are used to explain the variation in individual-specific willingness to pay (WTP) values, derived from a discrete choice experiment study. We find that respondents’ WTP is higher the closer they live to their nearest forest, and the scarcer forests are in the area where they live. Interestingly, the higher the ecological value of forests in respondents’ area, the more people prefer extending areas of national forest protection. We also investigate spatial patterns in individual-specific WTP scores and in latent class membership probabilities, finding that preferences are indeed spatially clustered. We argue that this clustering should be taken into account in forest management and policy-making.     

Peer effects in computer assisted learning: evidence from a randomized experiment

We conduct a large scale experiment to investigate peer effects in computer assisted learning (CAL). Identification relies on three levels of randomization. We find an average 0.17 standard deviation improvement in math scores among primary school students. This average effect is the same for students treated individually or in pairs, implying that peer effects double the learning benefit from a given equipment. Among paired students, poor performers benefit more from CAL when paired with good performers and vice versa. Average performers benefit equally irrespective of who they are paired with. This suggests that the treatment is dominated by knowledge exchange between peers. We also find that CAL treatment reduces the dispersion in math scores and that the beneficial effects of CAL can be strengthened if weak students are systematically paired with strong students.     

SCHOOL CHOICE AND STUDENT SORTING: EVIDENCE FROM ADACHI WARD IN JAPAN*

We examine whether the school choice programme of public junior high schools in Adachi ward has caused student sorting and has thus increased the differences in scores between the schools. We find that students are sorted in the sense that the students living in the school attendance areas where there is a higher proportion of high‐status occupations are more likely to select private schools even after the introduction of the school choice programme, or they select public schools with higher scores. Adachi's average scores relative to the Tokyo average have improved, while the between school differences in scores have not expanded.     

The rhetoric of a profession and path dependency. Can economists have their theory and free speech too? ∗

In his plea for the adoption of a rhetorical stance in economics, Donald McCloskey offers the hope that sensitivity to rhetoric will improve economists’ prose, teaching, relations with other disciplines and arguments, without changing the stories they tell. Rhetoric suggests ways to improve communication, but these involve changes in the profession’s education and incentive systems. Drawing on studies of technological lock-in and path dependency, we examine how the tools, concepts and formal language of neo-classical economics have ‘locked-in’, along with a style of communication inherited from nineteenth century physics. Given the nature of this lock-in, the mainstream profession is as likely to take to rhetoric as it is to write sonnets. Rhetoric promises to promote learning through free, open discussion and clear communication of arguments. We find that economists’ criteria for success and professional values systematically distort scholarly communication. We present two case studies. We conclude that it is not possible for economists to improve their story-telling while telling the same story.     

Grain inflation: Identifying agent discretion in response to a conditional school nutrition program

Many incentive programs rely on local agents with significant discretion to allocate benefits. We estimate the degree of discretion exercised by teachers within a conditional transfer program designed to improve nutrition and encourage student attendance in Mumbai, India. The program allocates grain to students every month their attendance exceeds 80% , creating an incentive for teachers to inflate attendance to benefit certain students. We find that teachers manipulate students' records, altering the incentives to attend school. The teachers' response also varies across students. Teachers inflate more for girls, better students, and students from lower castes, but less for Muslim students.     

Schooling as a Lottery: Racial Differences in School Advancement in Urban South Africa

This paper analyzes the large racial differences in progress through secondary school in South Africa. Using recently collected longitudinal data we find that grade advancement is strongly associated with scores on a baseline literacy and numeracy test. In grades 8-11 the effect of these scores on grade progression is much stronger for white and coloured students than for African students, while there is no racial difference in the impact of the scores on passing the nationally standardized grade 12 matriculation exam. We develop a stochastic model of grade repetition that generates predictions consistent with these results. The model predicts that a larger stochastic component in the link between learning and measured performance will generate higher enrollment, higher failure rates, and a weaker link between ability and grade progression. The results suggest that grade progression in African schools is poorly linked to actual ability and learning. The results point to the importance of considering the stochastic component of grade repetition in analyzing school systems with high failure rates.     

The Hospital-Acquired Conditions (HAC) reduction program: using cranberry treatment to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infections and avoid Medicare payment reduction penalties

Objective: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) established the Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) Reduction Program. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) established a total HAC scoring methodology to rank hospitals based upon their HAC performance. Hospitals that rank in the lowest quartile based on their HAC score are subject to a 1% reduction in their total Medicare reimbursements. In FY 2017, 769 hospitals incurred payment reductions totaling $430 million. This study analyzes how improvements in the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), based on the implementation of a cranberry-treatment regimen, impact hospitals’ HAC scores and likelihood of avoiding the Medicare-reimbursement penalty.

Methods: A simulation model is developed and implemented using public data from the CMS’ Hospital Compare website to determine how hospitals’ unilateral and simultaneous adoption of cranberry to improve CAUTI outcomes can affect HAC scores and the likelihood of a hospital incurring the Medicare payment reduction, given results on cranberry effectiveness in preventing CAUTI based on scientific trials. The simulation framework can be adapted to consider other initiatives to improve hospitals’ HAC scores.

Results: Nearly all simulated hospitals improved their overall HAC score by adopting cranberry as a CAUTI preventative, assuming mean effectiveness from scientific trials. Many hospitals with HAC scores in the lowest quartile of the HAC-score distribution and subject to Medicare reimbursement reductions can improve their scores sufficiently through adopting a cranberry-treatment regimen to avoid payment reduction.

Limitations: The study was unable to replicate exactly the data used by CMS to establish HAC scores for FY 2018. The study assumes that hospitals subject to the Medicare payment reduction were not using cranberry as a prophylactic treatment for their catheterized patients, but is unable to confirm that this is true in all cases. The study also assumes that hospitalized catheter patients would be able to consume cranberry in either juice or capsule form, but this may not be true in 100% of cases.

Conclusion: Most hospitals can improve their HAC scores and many can avoid Medicare reimbursement reductions if they are able to attain a percentage reduction in CAUTI comparable to that documented for cranberry-treatment regimes in the existing literature.     

How history matters for student performance. lessons from the Partitions of Poland

This paper examines the effect on current student performance of the 19th century Partitions of Poland among Austria, Prussia and Russia. Using a regression discontinuity design, I show that student test scores are 0.6 standard deviations higher on the Austrian side of the former Austrian-Russian border, despite the modern similarities of the three regions. However, I do not find evidence for differences across the Prussian-Russian border. Using a theoretical model and indirect evidence, I argue that the Partitions have persisted through their impact on social norms toward local schools. Nevertheless, the persistent effect of Austria is puzzling, given the historical similarities of the Austrian and Prussian education systems. I argue that the differential legacy of Austria and Prussia originates from the Austrian Empire’s policy to promote Polish identity in schools and the Prussian Empire’s efforts to Germanize the Poles through education.     

The contrasting interaction effects of university-industry collaboration motivation with demographic characteristics on university-industry collaboration performance in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

This paper applies a demographic characteristics perspective to understand the internal contingencies of the relationship between university-industry collaboration (UIC) motivation (commercialisation, learning, accessing the resources, and teaching) and UIC performance (number of publications, number of patents, commercial products, and number of business cooperation cases). The paper focuses on two aspects of demographic characteristics, age and gender among UIC scholars, and their effect on scholars’ UIC motivation as potential enhancements to improve UIC performance. We collected data from 376 scholars with UIC experience in Taiwan, and the proposed hypotheses were empirically tested. Our results extend the literature by showing that specific categories of UIC performance depend on a scholar's specific type of UIC motivation. We also specify the moderating effect of demographic characteristics on the relationship between specific subconstructs of UIC motivation and UIC performance. The study’s implications and future research directions are discussed.     

THE IMPACT OF PUBLICLY PROVIDED EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION PROGRAMS ON DISTRICT‐LEVEL TEST SCORES

While the existing literature largely finds that standardized test scores are positively associated with participation in pre‐kindergarten programs at the student level, there is little research on the policy effect of publicly providing these programs to entire school districts. We attempt to partially fill this void by examining the effect that publicly provided pre‐kindergarten and full‐day kindergarten programs have on fourth grade student achievement in math and reading at the district level. The models utilize panel data from districts in Wisconsin along with fixed effects estimations. We find that once time‐invariant unobserved heterogeneity of a district is accounted for, preschool programs have small but significant impacts on a cohort's future math scores, particularly in less‐educated communities. Additionally, there is no evidence that preschool or full‐day kindergarten has an impact on future reading scores at the district level. (JEL I20, I28)     

Budgeting for efficiency? A case study of the public K-12 education systems of Canada

In spite of the declining and uneven performance of Canadian students on the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, little attention has been paid to whether provinces are allocating their education budgets to improve academic performance. This study uses a two-stage data envelope analysis (DEA) technique to estimate the degree to which education expenditures are efficiently allocated relative to achievement scores. We find that in these terms the overall cost-efficiency of the public K-12 education systems in the 10 provinces has deteriorated and that, in general, the provinces have become less able to allocate resources efficiently and use them in the most technically productive way. However, some provinces are more efficient than others. To gauge the extent to which performance measures, such as PISA scores, factor into budgeting decisions we interviewed 28 budget managers in 10 Canadian provinces and two territories, probing the criteria used to allocate education resources. The preponderant pattern of budgeting is described as an ‘increments-based-on-formula’ approach, one that is not particularly responsive to efficiency concerns but that often takes account of equity imperatives.     

Using experimental economics to measure the effects of a natural educational experiment on altruism

Economic research examining how educational intervention programs affect primary and secondary schooling focuses largely on test scores although the interventions can affect many other outcomes. This paper examines how an educational intervention, a voucher program, affected students' altruism. The voucher program used a lottery to allocate scholarships among low-income applicant families with children in K-8th grade. By exploiting the lottery to identify the voucher effects, and using experimental economic methods, we measure the effects of the intervention on children's altruism. We also measure the voucher program's effects on parents' altruism and several academic outcomes including test scores. We find that the educational intervention positively affects students' altruism towards charitable organizations but not towards their peers. We fail to find statistically significant effects of the vouchers on parents' altruism or test scores.