EAD 948 Advanced Economics of Education Professor Scott Imberman 25D Marshall-Adams Hall Mailbox in 110 Marshall-Adams Hall. 517-355-4667 imberman@msu.edu Spring 2017 Synopsis: This course will cover topics in the economics of education through reading and discussion of seminal papers and new research in the economics of education. Specific topics chosen will be determined by the instructor with input from the students and may include, but are not limited to, accountability, labor market returns to education, peer effects, financial aid, teacher quality, school choice, elite schools, teacher incentives, and college access. Prerequisites: Some of the papers studied will require knowledge of advanced econometric techniques. Students are required to have taken EAD 946B, EC 820B, or the equivalent. If you are not sure about whether your background satisfies this requirement please discuss with me. Course Time and Location: MW 5:00 pm 6:20pm in 220 Bessey. Grading: Grades in the class will be primarily based on participation in the class discussions, presentations about the readings in class, and a handful of written assignments. (1) Class participation: Students are expected to attend class regularly, read all papers prior to the class in which they will be discussed and participate fully in class discussions. Given that this will be a small class, continual participation is essential. Participation will count for 20% of the grade. (2) Paper presentations: Each week we will discuss two to three papers. For each paper a student will be assigned the responsibility of reading the paper in detail and putting together a 15 minute presentation on the paper that he/she will present to the class as if the student were presenting the paper at a conference. Paper presentations are worth 20% of the grade. (3) Referee Report: Towards the middle of the semester, students will pick, with the approval of the instructor, a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper that was not discussed in class and will write a referee report on the paper as if the student were reviewing for a top economics or education policy journal. The referee report will be worth 20% of the grade. 1
(4) Final Paper: In lieu of a final exam, students will write a paper on a topic in the economics of education. The topic must be approved by the instructor and can include a topic covered in class or another topic not covered. Students may choose to do a literature review, a replication of an existing study, or conduct a work of original research. The paper will be worth 40% of the grade and will be due on the last day of class. Readings: I will inform you each week what readings will be discussed the following week. You are expected to have finished all assigned readings prior to the first class of the week. It is also recommended that students have an undergraduate or graduate econometrics textbook available (e.g. Wooldridge s Introductory Econometrics or Econometrics of Cross-Section and Panel Data). Given the large expense of these books I do not recommend you purchase if you do not already have a copy. Instead I will offer students the opportunity to check out my personal copies of the book when needed for reference. However, if you do not already have it I do strongly recommend you purchase Mostly Harmless Econometrics by Angrist & Pischke (Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0- 691-12035-5) as it is inexpensive (currently $34 on Amazon) and a very useful reference. The authors of that text also have a less technical, undergraduate level book called Mastering Metrics. I have not yet reviewed this text so I cannot recommend it at this time but it may be helpful. Methods Matter by Murnane and Willet (Oxford Press, ISBN 978-0-19-975386-4) is another undergraduate level text that provides intuitive, nontechnical descriptions of many of the econometric methods used in the course and is also inexpensive ($59 on Amazon). I find it to be an invaluable resource for students who have difficulty handling technical explanations of econometric methodologies. Potential Topics and Readings (note that this is an extended list and I anticipate choosing two to three papers from each topic to discuss in class). All of the readings listed below are available through MSU libraries e-journals or the provided links. This list is preliminary and subject to change. 1. Labor Market Returns to K-12 Education Angrist, Joshua and Alan Krueger. Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings? Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 106, No. 4 (Nov., 1991), pp. 979-1014 Clark, Damon, and Paco Martorell. "The signaling value of a high school diploma." Journal of Political Economy 122.2 (2014): 282-318. Chetty, Raj, et. al How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project STAR, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2011. 2
Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff. "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood." American Economic Review 104.9 (2014): 2633-2679. Oreopoulos, Philip. Estimating Average and Local Average Treatment Effects of Education When Compulsory Schooling Laws Really Matter American Economic Review, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Mar., 2006), pp. 152-175 2. Labor Market Returns to Higher Education Hoekstra, M. The Effect of Attending the State Flagship University on Earnings: A Discontinuity-Based Approach. Review of Economics and Statistics, 91.4 (2009): 717-724. Kirkeboen, Lars, Edwin Leuven, and Magne Mogstad. "Field of Study, Earnings, and Self-Selection." The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2016). Zimmerman, Seth. "The returns to college admission for academically marginal students." Journal of Labor Economics 32.4 (2014): 711-754. Hoxby, Caroline. Computing the Value-Added of American Postsecondary Institutions. (2015) https://www.irs.gov/pub/irssoi/15rpcompvalueaddpostsecondary.pdf 3. Peer Effects and Tracking Angrist, Joshua and Kevin Lang. 2004. Does Schooling Integration Generate Peer Effects? Evidence from Boston s Metco Program, American Economic Review, 94(5): 1613-1634. Carrell, Scott, and Mark Hoekstra. 2010. Externalities in the Classroom: How Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Affect Everyone s Kids, American Economic Journal Applied Economics 2(1): 211-228. Duflo, Esther, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer. 2011. Peer Effects and the Impact of Tracking: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Kenya American Economic Review 101(5). Imberman, Scott, Adriana Kugler, and Bruce Sacerdote. 2012. Katrina s Children: Evidence on the Structure of Peer Effects from Hurricane Evacuees American Economic Review, 102 (5). 3
Carrell, Scott E., Bruce I. Sacerdote, and James E. West. "From natural variation to optimal policy? The importance of endogenous peer group formation." Econometrica 81.3 (2013): 855-882. 4. Accountability Deming, David J., Sarah Cohodes, Jennifer Jennings, and Christopher Jencks. "School accountability, postsecondary attainment and earnings." Review of Economics and Statistics (2016). Figlio, David and Maurice E. Lucas. 2004. What s in a Grade? School Report Cards and the Housing Market. American Economic Review, 94: 591-604. Neal, Derek, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. "Left behind by design: Proficiency counts and test-based accountability." Review of Economics and Statistics 92.2 (2010): 263-283. Rockoff, Jonah, and Lesley J. Turner. "Short-Run Impacts of Accountability on School Quality." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2.4 (2010): 119-47. Rouse, Cecilia Elena, et al. "Feeling the Florida heat? How low-performing schools respond to voucher and accountability pressure." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5.2 (2013): 251-281. West, Martin R., and Paul E. Peterson. "The efficacy of choice threats within school accountability systems: Results from legislatively induced experiments." The Economic Journal 116.510 (2006): C46-C62. 5. Charter Schools Angrist, J., Abdulkadiroglu, A., Dynarski, S., Kane, T., and P. Pathak, Accountability and Flexibility in Public Schools: Evidence from Boston's Charters and Pilots. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2011. Angrist, Joshua D., Parag A. Pathak, and Christopher R. Walters. 2013. "Explaining Charter School Effectiveness." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5(4): 1-27. Booker, Kevin, et al. "The Effects of Charter High Schools on Educational Attainment." Journal of Labor Economics 29.2 (2011): 377-415. Imberman, Scott A. 2011. The Effect of Charter Schools on Achievement and Behavior of Public School Students. Journal of Public Economics, 95(7/8): 850-863. 4
7. Open Enrollment and School Quality Cullen, Julie Berry, Brian Jacob, and Steven Levitt. 2006. The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries. Econometrica, 74(5): 1191-1230. Deming, David J. "Better Schools, Less Crime?" The Quarterly Journal of Economics 126.4 (2011): 2063-2115. Hastings, Justine S., and Jeffrey M. Weinstein. "Information, School Choice, and Academic Achievement: Evidence from Two Experiments." The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2008): 1373-1414. Deming, David, et al. "School Choice, School Quality, and Postsecondary Attainment." American Economic Review 104.3 (2014): 991-1013. 8. Teacher Incentive Pay Dee, Thomas S., and James Wyckoff. "Incentives, selection, and teacher performance: Evidence from IMPACT." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 34.2 (2015): 267-297. Fryer, Roland G. "Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City Public Schools." Journal of Labor Economics 31.2 (2013): 373-407. Lavy. 2009. Performance Pay and Teachers Effort, Productivity and Grading Ethics. American Economic Review 99(5): 1979-2021. Muralidharan and Sundararaman. 2011. Teacher Performance Pay: Evidence from India, Journal of Political Economy 119(1):, 39 77. Imberman, Scott A., and Michael F. Lovenheim. "Incentive strength and teacher productivity: evidence from a group-based teacher incentive pay system." Review of Economics and Statistics 97.2 (2015): 364-386. Fryer Jr, Roland G., et al. Enhancing the efficacy of teacher incentives through loss aversion: A field experiment. NBER Working Paper No. w18237, 2012. 5
9. Elite Schools, Private Schools, and Vouchers Abdulkadiroğlu, Atila, Joshua Angrist, and Parag Pathak. "The Elite Illusion: Achievement Effects at Boston and New York Exam Schools." Econometrica 82.1 (2014): 137-196. Abdulkadiroglu, Atila, Parag A. Pathak, and Christopher R. Walters. School Vouchers and Student Achievement: Evidence from the Louisiana Scholarship Program. NBER WP No. w21839. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015. Dobbie, Will, and Roland G. Fryer Jr. "The Impact of Attending a School with High- Achieving Peers: Evidence from the New York City Exam Schools." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 6.3 (2014): 58-75. Evans, William N., and Robert M. Schwab. "Finishing high school and starting college: Do Catholic schools make a difference?" The Quarterly Journal of Economics (1995): 941-974. 10. Financial Aid in Higher Education Bettinger, Eric P., et al. "The role of application assistance and information in college decisions: Results from the H&R block FAFSA experiment." Quarterly Journal of Economics 127.3 (2012): 1205-1242. Dynarski, Susan. 2003. Does Aid Matter? Measuring the Effect of Student Aid on College Attendance and Completion. American Economic Review, 93(1): 279-288. Hoxby, Caroline M., and George B. Bulman. "The effects of the tax deduction for postsecondary tuition: Implications for structuring tax-based aid." Economics of Education Review 51 (2016): 23-60. Mustard, David B., Christopher Cornwell, and Deepa J. Sridhar. 2006. The Enrollment Effects of Merit-Based Financial Aid: Evidence from Georgia s HOPE Program. Journal of Labor Economics, 24(4): 761-786. Goodman, Joshua. "Who merits financial aid?: Massachusetts' Adams scholarship." Journal of public Economics 92.10 (2008): 2121-2131. Turner, Lesley. The Road to Pell is Paved with Good Intentions: The Economic Incidence of Federal Student Grant Aid. 2014. (http://econweb.umd.edu/~turner/turner_fedaidincidence.pdf) 11. College Access 6
Andrews, Rodney J., Scott A. Imberman, and Michael F. Lovenheim. Recruiting and Supporting Low-Income, High-Achieving Students at Flagship Universities. NBER WP No. w22260. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016. Hoxby, Caroline, and Christopher Avery. "The Missing" One-Offs": The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low-Income Students." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2013.1 (2013): 1-65. Hoxby, Caroline, and Sarah Turner. "Expanding College Opportunities for High- Achieving, Low Income Students."( http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/repec/sip/12-014.pdf) 7