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on Education |
| By: | Bertoni, Marco (University of Padova); Parkam, Saeideh (University of Naples Federico II) |
| Abstract: | We leverage the timing of pandemic-induced school closures to learn about the emergence of ordinal rank effects in education. Using administrative data from Italian middle schools for four cohorts of students, our study reveals that disrupting peer interactions during the first year of middle school - when students are still unfamiliar with one another - substantially diminishes the impact of ordinal rank on test scores. Instead, later interruptions to peer interactions do not significantly affect the strength of these interpersonal comparisons. |
| Keywords: | ability peer effect, ordinal ability rank, school closures, COVID-19 |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J24 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17222 |
| By: | Nicholas A. Wright (Department of Economics, Florida International University) |
| Abstract: | This paper utilizes administrative data to investigate the gender gap in high school performance on various high-stakes exams and the gender disparity in academic outcomes at the leading university in the Caribbean. The results show that female students outperformed their male peers, being 8.5 and 6.6 percentage points more likely to pass a generic subject in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) exams, respectively. These results are robust across subject type, school ownership, school rank, and subject difficulty. Additionally, more females are admitted to each degree program annually, and they continue to outperform males regardless of age, enrollment status, or admission scores. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition indicate that school attributes, subject-cohort composition, and subject choice explain up to 78% of the gender gap in CSEC and CAPE pass rates, while college readiness, college-level decisions, and field of study fully explain the gap in college GPA. |
| Keywords: | Gender Achievement Gap, Academic Performance, High-Stakes Exam, STEM |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J16 J24 N36 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fiu:wpaper:2410 |
| By: | Batistich, Mary Kate (University of Notre Dame); Bond, Timothy N. (Purdue University); Linde, Sebastian (Texas A&M University); Mumford, Kevin J. (Purdue University) |
| Abstract: | We develop a model of college major selection in an environment where firms and students have incomplete information about the student's aptitude. Students must choose from a continuum of majors which differ in their human capital production function and can act as a signal to the market. Whether black students choose more or less difficult majors than similar white students, and whether they receive a higher or lower return to major difficulty, depends on the extent to which employers statistically discriminate. We find strong evidence that statistical discrimination influences major choice using administrative data from several large universities and two nationally representative surveys. |
| Keywords: | mismatch, affirmative action, statistical discrimination |
| JEL: | J71 J15 I26 |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17237 |
| By: | Nicholas A. Wright (Department of Economics, Florida International University); Puneet Arora (Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India); Jesse Wright (Florida Gulf Coast University) |
| Abstract: | Students often start a course with high expectations and an ambitious plan of action. Some instructors use goal-inducing non-binding commitment pledges to nudge students to follow through on their intended course of action. Using a field experiment, we asked treated students to set a goal grade, identify the actions they will take to achieve it, and sign a commitment pledge to work towards this grade. We find that while treated students pledged a greater time commitment and targeted a higher grade, their overall test scores decrease by 0.23 standard deviations and they were 15 percentage points less likely to pass the course. |
| Keywords: | Commitment Pledge, Goal-setting, Academic Performance, Overconfidence, Grade Expectations |
| JEL: | A2 C93 D8 I2 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fiu:wpaper:2411 |
| By: | Titus Galama (University of Southern California’s Center for Economic and Social Research, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Andrei Munteanu (Université du Québec à Montréal); Kevin Thom (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) |
| Abstract: | Using linked records from the 1880 to 1940 full-count United States decennial censuses, we estimate the effects of parental exposure to compulsory schooling (CS) laws on the human capital outcomes of children, exploiting the staggered roll-out of state CS laws in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. CS reforms not only increased the educational attainment of exposed individuals, but also that of their children. We find that one extra year of maternal (paternal) exposure to CS increased children’s educational attainment by 0.015 (0.016) years - larger than the average effects on the parents themselves, and larger than the few existing intergenerational estimates from studies of more recent reforms. We find particularly large effects on black families and first-born sons. Exploring mechanisms, we find suggestive evidence that higher parental exposure to CS affected children’s outcomes through higher own human capital, marriage to more educated spouses, and a higher propensity to reside in neighborhoods with greater school resources (teacher-to-student ratios) and with higher average educational attainment. |
| Keywords: | Education, Economic Development, Returns to Education |
| JEL: | I1 I2 I24 I25 I26 |
| Date: | 2024–01–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20240006 |