How Far is the East? : Educational Performance in Eastern Europe

When the Soviet Union collapsed a transition process started in Eastern Europe. This included a number of reforms to adapt the educational system to the new requirements of the job market. To assess the educational systems in Eastern Europe, this paper takes a look at the gap in PISA test scores between F inland, the best performing country, and seven Eastern European countries, as well as, between Eastern European countries. The methodology applied in this paper is a semiparametric version of the threefold BlinderOaxaca decomposition , an approach which is not yet used in the research regarding the differences in school outcomes. JEL classification: J24, !21, C14 Keywor-ds: PISA , test score gap, decomposition, semiparametric, propensity score matching *Corresponding author. Department of Economics, Box D124, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany. Phone + +49-7531-88-5111, Fax -4450, email: [email protected]. Ruben Seiberlich gratefully acknowledges support received from the State of Baden-Wiirttemberg through its LGFG-scholarship. Alina Botezat acknowledges support received ''vithin the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the contract number POSDRU6/ 1.5/ S/ 25. This paper benefited from helpful ideas and discussions with Benjamin Hess, Elisabeta Jaba, Fabian Kriiger and especially our supervisor vVinfried Pohlmeier. Moreover, we are very grateful to Ronald Oaxaca for his comments and we thank the seminar participants at the University of Konstanz and the University of la§i, as well as the session participants at the Annual Meeting of the Irish Society of New Economists 2010, Dublin, and at the Annual Meetings of the Society of Labor Economists (SOLE) 2011, Vancouver for their helpful comments. All remaining errors are ours.