Peer effects, neighbourhood effects and social housing: impact on students' achievement in England

我的建议建立在我在博士期间承担的三个不同的项目上。这三项研究处于劳动经济学、城市经济学和教育经济学的十字路口。其基本和统一的主题是社会不平等的产生和永久存在，以及“机会平等”的概念，这是我们理解现代民主社会的核心。因此，我的所有工作都与政策直接相关。第一篇论文着眼于英国中学能力同伴效应的规模、意义和异质性。这篇论文在方法论上做出了重要的贡献，并表明，平均同伴质量对其他学生教育结果的影响大部分或全部是由成绩特别差和成绩优异的学生造成的，这种影响因性别而异。这一发现大大增加了现有的文献，并表明政策应该把注意力从基于平均能力的学校分类，转向学生在学校内的混合。这篇论文现已提交给《劳动经济学杂志》进行修订和重新提交。我的第二篇论文估计了生活在贫困的高密度社会住房社区对英国青少年教育水平的影响。我提出了一个新的评估策略，利用搬进这些社区的时机。使用这种方法，我的初步结果表明，没有证据表明存在负面影响，这与直觉相反，并可能对社会住房政策产生广泛影响。这篇论文的前一稿在旧金山举行的2009年北美地区科学和城市经济学协会联合会议上获得了最佳研究生论文奖。第三篇论文调查了邻居的特征和先前的成就对青少年教育和行为结果的影响。该项目采用一种创新的方法，依赖于移民者引起的社区质量变化，同时控制总体的中产阶级化趋势。初步结果表明，邻居的特征对小学生考试成绩有显著影响的证据很少，而且对小学生的行为结果，如对学校的一般态度、药物使用和反社会行为的影响也很小。这将意味着将政策的重点放在人而不是地方上。从一开始，我就计划在研讨会上介绍我的工作，与我在社区和地方政府部门的联系人讨论我的发现，将草稿发送给从事相关主题的研究人员，并提交给主要会议。因此，我计划将修订后的版本提交给更多的会议，并-利用我的从属关系-在2012年春季以IZA讨论文件的形式发表我的第二篇论文。根据我参加Charles Manski在IFS/UCL关于识别社会互动的Cemmap大师班的新见解、Machin教授的专业知识以及从演讲中获得的反馈，我打算用一个结构模型来补充我的第二篇论文。在与麦钦教授的密切协调下，我们将决定是使用这篇论文作为我的“就业市场论文”，还是使用我的第三篇论文并提交给“经济学季刊”。奖学金的第二年将首先围绕学术就业市场展开。在最后几个月，我计划申请拨款，创建一个全国性的社会住房数据集，用于未来的研究(数据目前仅保存在当地)。我还将在会议和学术界之外传播我的发现，继续充分利用CEP的媒体关系和麦钦教授的人脉，以便也能接触到公共领域的受益者。总体而言，这将极大地提高我工作的质量、影响力和出版潜力，并为我未来的学术生涯奠定坚实的基础。

My proposal builds upon three distinct projects which I have undertaken during the course of my PhD. These three pieces of research sit at the crossroads between Labour, Urban and Education Economics. Their underlying and unifying theme is the generation and perpetuation of social inequalities and the concept of 'equality of chances', which lies at the heart of our understanding of modern democratic society. As a result, all of my work is directly policy relevant.The first paper looks at the size, significance and heterogeneity of ability peer effects in secondary schools in England. The paper makes an important methodological contribution and shows that it is the exceptionally low- and high-achievers, who account for most or all of the effect of average peer quality on the educational outcomes of other pupils, and this effect varies across genders. This finding adds substantially to the existing literature and suggests that policy should focus attention away from sorting into schools based on average abilities, and towards intra-school mixing of pupils. The paper has now been offered a Revise and Resubmit to the Journal of Labor Economics.My second paper estimates the effect of living in a deprived high density social housing neighbourhood on the educational attainment of teenagers in England. I propose a new estimation strategy exploiting the timing of moving into these neighbourhoods. Using this approach, my preliminary results suggest that there is no evidence of negative effects, which is counter-intuitive and has potentially wide-ranging implications for social housing policy. A previous draft of this paper won the best graduate paper award at the joint 2009 North American Regional Science and Urban Economics Association conference in San Francisco.The third paper investigates the effect of neighbours' characteristics and prior achievements on teenagers' educational and behavioural outcomes. Using an innovative methodology, the project relies on mover-induced variation in neighbourhood quality, whilst controlling for general gentrification trends. Preliminarily results provide little evidence that neighbours' characteristics significantly affect pupil test score progression, and only exert a small effect on pupil behavioural outcomes, such as general attitudes towards schooling, substance use and anti-social behaviour. This would imply focussing policy towards people rather than places. A draft has been accepted to the SOLE conference.Right from the start of the fellowship, I plan to present my work at seminars, discuss my findings with my contacts at the Department for Communities and Local Government, send drafts to researchers working on related topics and submit to major conferences. Consequently, I plan to submit revised versions to further conferences and -using my affiliation- publish my second paper as IZA Discussion Paper in spring 2012.With new insights from my participation in Charles Manski's Cemmap Masterclass on Identification of Social Interactions at IFS/UCL, Professor Machin's expertise and using the feedback from the presentations, I intend to augment my second paper with a structural model. In close coordination with Professor Machin we would then decide if I use this as my "job market paper", or otherwise use my third paper and submit to the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The second year of the fellowship would first evolve around the academic job market. In the final months, I plan to apply for grants to create a nationwide dataset on social housing for future research (data is currently only held locally). I will also disseminate my findings at conferences and outside academia, continuing to fully exploiting CEP media relations and Professor Machin's contacts in order to reach beneficiaries in the public domain, as well.Overall, this would greatly increase the quailty, impact and publication potential of my work and set a solid foundation for my future academic career.