Is Extending Compulsory Schooling Alone Enough to Raise Earnings? Evidence from French and British Compulsory Schooling Laws*

In this paper, I compare two reforms that raised the minimum school‐leaving age to 16 in France (1967) and in England and Wales (1972). Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that while the reform in England and Wales led to a 6?7 percent increase in hourly wages per additional year of compulsory schooling, the impact of the change to French law was close to zero. The results suggest that the major difference between the two reforms was that the fraction of individuals holding no qualifications dropped sharply after the introduction of the new minimum school‐leaving age in England and Wales, whereas it remained unchanged in France.     

Estimating the benefit of high school for university‐bound students: evidence of subject‐specific human capital accumulation

Numerous studies suggest that the value of high school education is large for potential dropouts, yet we know much less about the benefits for students who will go on to post‐secondary education. To help fill this gap I measure, using a recent Ontario high school reform, the value‐added (in terms of university grades) of an extra year of high‐school mathematics for university‐bound students. The estimated benefit is small for these students: 2.3 points on a 100‐point scale. This evidence helps to explain why the literature has found only modest effects of taking more mathematics in high school on wages.     

Can Small Class Policy Close the Gap? An Empirical Analysis of Class Size Effects in Japan

Can smaller classes lead to better educational outcomes and greater equality in achievement? We estimate the causal effects of class size on achievement tests by using discontinuous changes in class size under the Japanese public compulsory education system. We employ a value‐added model that uses achievement tests conducted at two different times during the same school year. Our results show that a reduction in class size has significantly positive effects on Japanese language test scores in the sixth grade, especially at schools in wealthy areas. However, we find no evidence that a universal small class policy closes the achievement gap among schools.     

Resource constraints and educational attainment in developing countries: Colombia 1945–2005

In this paper, I investigate the extent to which secondary and higher education supply constraints affected aggregate educational attainment in Colombia for cohorts born between 1945 and 1981. As was the case in many other countries after World War II, in Colombia, industrialization, urbanization and rapid population growth increased the demand for education and the return to schooling. Although educational expenditures from the central government and the states increased after the 1950s, secondary and tertiary schools' per-pupil inputs declined. Using variation in cohort size within states and over time to proxy for changes in education demand, I find that for cohorts born after 1945, a 10% increase in cohort size reduced high school completion rate by 3%, the college completion rate by 4% and average years of schooling by 1%. Compared to women's educational attainment rates, changes in cohort size had greater negative effects on men's rates.     

Does Raising the Principal's Wage Improve the School's Outcomes? Quasi‐experimental Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment in Israel

This paper reports estimates of the causal effects of a 50 percent increase in the salary of headmasters of high schools in Israel. The results suggest that the program led to significant improvements in twelfth‐grade students' academic achievements. However, the effect was relatively modest, comprising increases of about 5–10 percent in the school mean matriculation rate, average score and number of subjects and credit units taken in matriculation programs. Based on these results and the lack of evidence regarding the effect of increasing teachers' salary, it seems that priority should be given to paying higher wages to school principals.     

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.     

Can neighbourhoods change the decisions of youth on the margins of university participation?

Abstract This paper uses the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) to estimate the relationship between neighbourhoods and university participation among Canadian youth. Neighbourhood quality is proxied by the fraction of neighbourhood adults with a Bachelor's degree. The estimated effect is identified using neighbourhood variation within high schools. The paper also tests whether the effects differ by family background and children’s reading skills. Neighbourhoods do not affect university participation among youth drawn from the tails of the socio‐economic distribution. Neighbourhoods have the largest effect on youth drawn from the middle of the socio‐economic distribution who also have above median reading skills.     

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.