Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: How Does Ability Information Impact Educational Investments?

经济学博士论文研究：能力信息如何影响教育投资？摘要：PiPascaline Dupas，合著者PiRebecca Dizon-Rosin近年来，发展中国家的政府在改善教育机会方面投入了大量资金。然而，尽管采取了这些措施，教育不平等在几代人之间仍然存在。这个项目将调查一个相对未经检验的教育不平等假说：贫穷的父母对孩子的能力有更多不准确的信息，这阻碍了他们对孩子的教育进行最优投资。这项研究将通过马拉维的一项随机对照试验来探索这一假设。首先，它将衡量父母对孩子的能力和学业表现的看法。然后，它将向随机选择的父母提供关于他们孩子真实表现的信息，并衡量其对教育投资的影响。因此，调查人员将能够回答以下研究问题：能力信息是否会影响投资？贫乏的信息能部分解释教育程度的社会经济差距吗？此外，通过考察父母的投资(相对于对照组的投资)是增加还是减少(相对于对照组的投资)，这项研究将解决这个问题：教育投资如何取决于孩子实际测量的能力？由于大多数最优人力资本投资模型表明，有效的教育投资取决于孩子的能力，这项研究将通过研究教育投资无效的一个潜在重要来源--投资取决于感知而不是真实的能力--来为文献做出贡献。此外，这项研究预计将有助于研究能力和教育是互补还是替代的文献，以及如果孩子的能力更低或更高，父母是否会投入更多资金。经验性地估计这些关系很困难，因为存在反向因果关系--因为投资可能会增加可测量的能力，人们无法区分高能力是高投资的原因还是结果--并忽略了变量偏差。这项研究通过使用信息冲击来创造(感知)能力的外生变异，从而改进了以前的工作。

Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: How Does Ability Information Impact Educational Investments?Abstract: PI Pascaline Dupas, co-PI Rebecca Dizon-RossIn recent years, governments across the developing world have invested heavily in improving educational access. However, despite these measures, educational inequalities still persist across generations.This project will investigate a relatively unexamined hypothesis for educational inequalities: that poorer parents have more inaccurate information about their children's ability, which prevents them from making optimal investments in their children's schooling. The research will explore this hypothesis through a randomized controlled trial in Malawi. First, it will measure parents' beliefs about their children's aptitude and school performance. It will then provide randomly selected parents with information about their children's true performance, and measure the effect on educational investments.The investigators will thus be able to address the following research questions: Does ability information impact investments? Can poor information explain part of the socioeconomic gap in educational attainment?In addition, by examining whether parental investments increase or decrease (relative to investments in the control group) depending on whether parents find out if their children's performance was lower or higher than expected, the research will address the question: how do schooling investments depend upon a child's actual measured ability?Since most models of optimal human capital investment show that efficient schooling investments depend upon a child's ability, this research will contribute to the literature by examining a potentially important source of inefficient investments in education -- that investments depend on perceived, not true, ability.Moreover, the study is expected to contribute to the literature examining whether ability and schooling are complements or substitutes, and whether parents invest more if their child has lower or higher ability. Empirically estimating these relationships is difficult because of reverse causality -- because investments may increase measured ability, one cannot distinguish whether high ability is a cause or effect of high investment -- and omitted variable bias. The proposed research improves upon the identification of previous work by using information shocks to create exogenous variation in (perceived) ability.