New Empirical Analysis in the Economics of Education

Research in the economics of education has expanded rapidly all over the world in recent years. Scholars have not only inquired into an array of novel topics but they have become increasingly aware of methodological challenges posed by endogenous relationships among the variables of interest. A leading example is research on school choice, because choice necessarily implies selection and the variables that influence selection may be fundamentally intertwined with educational outcomes. To select implies a mutual attraction between chooser and chosen. Given the interaction, it is difficult to pick apart the causal forces of any effects that might be created by the connection. It therefore does not come as a surprise that Coleman et al.’s (1982) classic observational study of student performance in public and private schools in the US set off not just an avalanche of controversy over school choice but a tectonic shift in research design. Observational studies have given way to experimental and quasi‐experimental investigations, with the randomised field trial set as the gold standard (Peterson et al., 2003). But the tectonic shift has a range far beyond school choice research. Studies range from private management to teacher compensation policy to peer group relationships to the value of compulsory education. In covering several of these topical themes in education policy and research, the articles collected in this Feature, first presented at a conference jointly organised by CESifo and the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance in Munich in 2008, nicely illustrate the range of options for possible identification, comprising experiments in the field and in the laboratory as well as natural experiments identified from observational data

Corporate governance · Economics · Empirical research · Epistemology · Management · Mathematics education · Observational study · Political science · Positive economics · Public relations · Set (abstract data type · Surprise · Computer Science · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Mathematics · Psychology · School Choice and Performance · Social Psychology

• The Economics of School Choice

  Caroline M Hoxby, Caroline Hoxby•Economics of School Choice•2003

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