Research
Working Papers
A large scale education reform in India introduced automatic promotion in all elementary grades. This paper estimates the impact of automatic promotion on education outcomes. I use plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to the policy due to initial differences in repetition rates across districts. I find that automatic promotion reduces dropout rates by 0.1 percentage points for children in the upper-primary age. How- ever, the policy had a negative effect on learning outcomes. The probability that a primary age student could solve a basic reading and arithmetic task falls by 0.3 and 0.8 percentage points respectively. The negative effect was larger for children with a poor socio-economic background. I explore probable mechanisms for the decline in learning levels. I find that districts with congested government schools suffered more due to the policy.
The increasing number of contract teachers in developing countries has led to concerns about the effect of their employment on teacher quality. Contract teachers are in general less trained and qualified. However, they are more likely to be hired from the local community, which can positively affect student out- comes by reducing social distance or through better monitoring. This paper provides evidence on the difference in the impact of contract and regular civil service teachers with a special focus on the effect of being a local teacher or native of the village. Using a value-added estimation method, based on data from a unique survey in India, we find no statistically significant difference in the performance of contract and regular teachers for both grades 4 and 6. However, within contract teachers, we observe that local teachers have a significant and positive impact (0.24 standard deviation) on student learning for grade 6.
Access to education and women health: Evidence using regression discontinuity design (RDD)
(Working in progress)
(Working in progress)