Within-District School Lotteries, District Selection, and the Average Partial Effects of School Inputs

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 02/24/2017 - 11:40
Author

Eleanor Jawon Choi, Hyungsik Roger Moon, Geert Ridder

Year Published
2017
Abstract
This paper proposes an econometric framework to consistently estimate the average
partial effects (APE) of school inputs on academic achievement when students are randomly
assigned to schools within each school district but endogenously sort across school
districts. We illustrate our method by estimating the APE of single-sex schooling and
class size on standardized test scores using data from Seoul, Korea in 2008-2009. Our
APE estimates are smaller than the estimates from conventional linear regressions with
school district fixed effects, which ignore endogenous district choice and thus suffer from
selection bias.
Research Category