Competition from Privately Operated Schools

A further element of the institutional structure of school systems is competition among schools for the best ideas arising from the choice of parents among different school operators. Our international analyses show that school systems that combine large shares of privately operated schools with public funding perform particularly well. A prime example for the combination of private operation with pubic funding is the Netherlands, where three quarters of students attend privately operated schools - that are all financed by the state. To prevent that results are biased from reverse causation of low achievement on the expansion of the private school sector, our method uses that part of the variation in today's private school shares which can be traced back to larger historical Catholic population shares in 1900 and thus to historical resistance of the Catholic church against the emerging state-run school systems.

Here you can find a short non-technical overview on this topic.

Research papers:

‘Every Catholic Child in a Catholic School’: Historical Resistance to State Schooling, Contemporary School Competition and Student Achievement across Countries (with M.R. West). Economic Journal 120 (546): F229-F255, 2010

School Competition and Students’ Entrepreneurial Intentions: International Evidence Using Historical Catholic Roots of Private Schooling (with O. Falck). Small Business Economics 40 (2): 459-478, 2013

Public-Private Partnerships and Student Achievement: A Cross-Country Analysis. In: R. Chakrabarti, P.E. Peterson (eds.), School Choice International: Exploring Public-Private Partnerships, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 13-45, 2009

The Importance of School Systems: Evidence from International Differences in Student Achievement. Journal of Economic Perspectives 30 (3): 3-31, 2016

Institutional Determinants of School Efficiency and Equity: German States as a Microcosm for OECD Countries. Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik / Journal of Economics and Statistics 230 (2): 234-270, 2010

What Accounts for International Differences in Student Performance? A Re-examination using PISA Data (with T. Fuchs). Empirical Economics 32 (2-3): 433-464, 2007

Schooling Resources, Educational Institutions, and Student Performance: The International Evidence. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 65 (2): 117-170, 2003

Non-technical contributions:

Competition from Private Schools Boosts Performance System-wide (with M.R. West). VOX, 2.12.2010

School Choice International: Higher Private School Share Boosts Test Scores (with M.R. West). Education Next 9 (1): 54-61, 2009

Material available only in German

Newspapers articles and interviews:

Der Segen des Wettbewerbs. Handelsblatt, 30.11.2007, p. K4

Von Wettbewerb profitieren alle. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12.10.2010, p. 44

Mehr Wettbewerb statt mehr Geld. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 25.10.2008, p. 52

Wie eine Flut. Wirtschaftswoche, No. 32, 6.8.2007, p. 25

A contribution about our research results:

Pisawunder. Beitrag in der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung vom 29.9.2010 zu unserer Forschung zu katholischen Privatschulen

Non-technical contributions:

Wettbewerb durch öffentliche Finanzierung von Schulen in freier Trägerschaft als wichtiger Ansatzpunkt zur Verbesserung des Schulsystems. ifo Schnelldienst 64 (1): 9-18, 2011

Wettbewerb durch Privatschulen erhöht Leistungen im gesamten Schulsystem (with M.R. West). Ökonomenstimme, 13.12.2010