Understanding Education Markets: Experimental and Observational Evidence from Pakistan

项目摘要PI提出了三项研究，以更好地了解发展中国家的教育市场。这些市场的特点是，学校选择越来越多，种类也越来越多，即使是来自贫困家庭的儿童也是如此。研究联合收割机结合了一个独特的数据集与非实验和实验的变化，以隔离供应和需求因素。该数据集是一个为期四年的匹配面板（“LEAPS”数据），由PI收集，使用多项调查和考试来覆盖巴基斯坦100多个不同的教育市场（村庄）的教育领域-学校，教师，家长和儿童。第一项研究审查了教育市场，特别是学校，如何受到学校和学生成绩报告卡的影响。它利用了一项实验性干预措施，即通过学校和儿童标准化考试成绩向LEAPS样本中那些村庄的父母提供学习质量信息。广泛的数据允许单独检查学校，教师，家长和儿童的反应，在一般均衡的背景下，干预，允许调查的影响，信息提供对整个市场及其参与者。此外，利用（非实验）的变化，学校的质量和类型提供了更一般的见解，这些actors.The第二项研究调查的潜在的经济反应，使公共供应商更响应家长的需求的市场范围内的影响。这项研究利用了政府进行的干预，在LEAPS村庄的一个部分随机子集中重组了公立学校理事会，使它们更能代表家长，并为它们提供额外的资源。提议再进行一轮调查，以审查干预措施的中期影响。这项研究将审查对公立学校成果的影响，以及鉴于私立学校没有得到这种支持，增加公共补贴可能产生的挤出效应。第三项研究审查了父母的决策和对儿童的教育投资。对LEAPS数据的初步研究显示，父母在他们认为更有能力的孩子身上投入了更多的资金。本研究结合了新的能力的看法和教育投资数据，每个孩子在四年的调查期间，由于儿童水平的成绩单的看法与外源性变化。这项研究探讨的程度和性质的父母投资重新分配从孩子透露（throughthereport cards）或多或少能够比父母最初believed.Intellectual MeritThe拟议的研究有助于我们了解的工作和发展中国家的教育市场的演变。可行的和可扩展的实验干预措施，允许改进的经验识别，同时保持认识的外部有效性，和全面的纵向数据，允许在教育市场上的所有突出的演员检查相结合，使这些研究的独特性和价值。虽然我们专注于一个发展中国家和具体的干预措施，但更广泛的目标是产生见解，并揭示可推广到其他环境的经济行为。每项研究都有助于具体的研究领域，特别是越来越多的文献使用信息，以改善服务的提供，系统的效率，直接授权受益人的公共服务，和家庭内的资源分配。在最近的发展政策中，以信息为基础的问责制和增强社区管理地方公益物的能力一直很突出。此外，越来越受欢迎的公共再分配政策的设计在很大程度上取决于家庭分配结构和父母决策。研究人员计划通过意见稿、政策简报和政策制定者参与的会议来传播这些研究的更广泛结果。此外，为了促进进一步研究，特别是学生和政策分析人员的研究，将公开提供所收集的新颖和全面的数据。第一年的数据已经可以在项目网站上访问，研究人员计划沿着详细的文档，以方便外部使用。

Project SummaryThe PI's propose three studies to better understand the educational market in developing countries. Increasingly, these markets are characterized by substantial and varied school choice, even for children from poor backgrounds. The studies combine a unique dataset with non-experimental and experimental variation to isolate supply and demand factors. The dataset is a four-year, matched panel (the "LEAPS" data) collected by the PIs that uses multiple surveys and exams to cover the educational universe - schools, teachers, parents, and children - for over a hundred distinct educational markets (villages) in Pakistan. The first study examines how the education market, especially schools, is affected by the introduction of report cards on relative school and student performance. It takes advantage of an experimental intervention that provided learning quality information via school and child standardized test scores to parents in half of the villages in the LEAPS sample. The extensive data permits separate examination of school, teacher, parent, and child responses to the intervention in a general equilibrium context, allowing for an investigation of the effects of the information provision on the entire market and its actors. Moreover, exploiting (non-experimental) variation across school quality and type provides more general insights into the underlying economic responses of these actors.The second study investigates the market-wide impact of making public providers more responsive to parental demand. The study utilizes an intervention carried out by the government that reorganized public school councils in a partially randomized subset of the LEAPS villages, making them more representative of the parent body and providing them with additional resources. An additional survey round is proposed to examine the medium-term impact of the intervention. The study will examine both the impact on public school outcomes and, given that private schools did not receive this support, the potential crowding-out effects of increased public subsidies. The third study examines parental decision-making and educational investments for children. An initial examination of the LEAPS data shows parents invest significantly more in children they perceive to be more able. This study combines novel ability perceptions and educational investment data for each child over the four-year period of the survey with exogenous variation in perceptions due to the child-level report cards. The study examines the extent and nature of parental investment reallocation from children revealed (throughthe report cards) to be more or less able than what parents initially believed.Intellectual MeritThe proposed studies contribute to our understanding of the workings and evolution of the educational markets in developing countries. The combination of feasible and scalable experimental interventions, which allow for improved empirical identification while remaining cognizant of external validity, and comprehensive longitudinal data, which permit an examination of all salient actors in the education market, makes these studies unique and valuable. While we focus on one developing country and specific interventions, the broader goal is to generate insights and uncover economic behaviors that are generalizable to other settings. Each study contributes to specific research areas, in particular to a growing literature on using information to improve service delivery, the efficacy of systems that directly empower beneficiaries of public services, and within-household resource allocation.Broader ImpactAll three studies directly address questions of policy import. Information-based accountability and the empowerment of communities to manage local public goods have been prominent in recent development policy. Moreover, the design of increasingly popular public redistribution policies depends crucially on the structure of family allocations and parental decision-making. The researchers plan to disseminate the broader findings of these studies through opinion pieces, policy briefs, and conferences that engage policy-makers. Also, in order to facilitate further research, particularly by students and policy analysts, the novel and comprehensive data gathered will be made publicly available. The first year of the data is already accessible on the project website, and the researchers plan to make subsequent rounds available along with detailed documentation to facilitate outside use.