Jiemin Xu

Abstract: This paper studies how parents influence skill formation in adolescence through monitoring when children choose learning effort. Motivated by evidence that parental monitoring increases class effort, I develop and estimate a dynamic model in which monitoring is a costly parental choice that affects skill formation through child effort. Shutting down the monitoring channel decreases skill accumulation by 0.09 standard deviation over four years. Despite smaller increases in child effort from monitoring, high-SES parents monitor more because they face lower monitoring costs. Equalizing monitoring costs across SES groups slows the expansion of the SES skill gap in adolescence by eight percent.