Joint with Iftikhar Hussain
Studying an embedded nationwide system of school inspections, we find that poorer households are as responsive as their richer counterparts to new information about school effectiveness. We use exogenous variation in the timing of school inspections around the school choice deadline to identify the pure information effect on parental school choices and, in equilibrium, on school enrolment. Our results imply that all types of school face demand side pressure to improve (or maintain) their effectiveness. The overall effects of general information provision do not increase segregation by poverty.
Previously circulated as The Importance of School Quality Ratings for School Choices: Evidence from a Nationwide System
Joint with Hélène Turon
Geographic school admissions criteria bind residential and school choices for parents, and could create externalities in equilibrium for non-parents through dis- placement or higher rent. Through a dynamic structural model, we show that the policy decision of geographic versus non-geographic school admissions criteria has important implications for school and housing markets. Geographic admissions criteria segregate schools but integrate neighborhoods according to income. Incorporating non-parents and older households into the model challenges the existing understanding of how schools affect the housing market: they face externalities from the geographic school admissions and their residential decisions dampen the equilibrium price premium around popular schools.
It is a well-known empirical fact that access to a ‘good’ school causally increases local property prices. But who drives this demand, and how is neighbourhood composition ultimately affected? I estimate which households move to access a ‘good’ local school and when they move across the life-cycle, using longitudinal data and a difference-in-differences design. I find that price premia are driven by a minority of affluent households and are not dampened by older households moving away. This matters for the role of school admissions arrangements in neighbourhood formation, households’ welfare, and the general equilibrium effects of potential school choice reforms.