Preferences and Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in a Public School Choice Lottery
نویسندگان
چکیده
We use data from a public school choice lottery to estimate the effect of attending a first-choice school. For the average student, attending a first-choice school is not associated with improvements in test scores or other academic outcomes. However, academic achievement is only one goal families may have when choosing a school and, depending on their preferences, parents may trade-off academic achievement against other desirable school traits. We estimate the implicit weight families attached to school test scores as revealed by their choices, and test for interactions between those preferences and the impact of winning the lottery. We find that those whose parents placed high weights on school test scores in their school choices experienced significant gains in test scores. Therefore, the impact of winning the lottery on academic achievement depends upon parents' objectives when choosing schools.
منابع مشابه
Gender and Performance: Evidence from School Assignment by Randomized Lottery
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