Joint with Iftikhar Hussain
Studying a long-running nationwide system of school inspections, we provide real-world evidence about how parents' school choices respond to new information about school quality. We use exogenous variation in the timing of school inspections around the school choice deadline to identify the pure information effect on parents' school choices and eventual school enrollment. We find that low-income parents respond similarly to new information to their richer-counterparts. Conditional on household location, general information provision does not increase school segregation by household income.
Previously circulated as "Symmetric school choice patterns by income: evidence from nationwide school quality information"
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.