196 records from EconBiz based on author Name

1. Measuring Opportunity in U.S. Higher Education

abstract

In identifying whether universities provide opportunities for low-income students, there is a measurement challenge: different institutions face students with different incomes and preparation. We show how a hypothetical university's "relevant pool"-the students from whom it could plausibly draw-affects popular measures: the Pell share, Bottom Quintile share, and Intergenerational Mobility. Using a proof by contradiction, we demonstrate that universities ranked highly on the popular measures can actually serve disproportionately few low-income students. We also show the reverse: universities slated for penalties on the popular measures can actually serve disproportionately many low-income students. Furthermore, the Intergenerational Mobility measure penalizes universities that face relatively equal income distributions, which are probably good for low-income students, and rewards universities that face very unequal income distributions. In short, by confounding differences in university effort with differences in circumstances, the popular measures could distort university decision making and produce unintended consequences. We demonstrate that, with well-thought-out data analysis, it is possible to create benchmarks that actually measure what they are intended to measure. In particular, we present a measure that overcomes the deficiencies of the popular measures and is informative about all, not just low-income, students

Hoxby, Caroline M.; Turner, Sarah E.;
2019
Availability: Link Link
Citations: 5 (based on OpenCitations) Cited By

---

2. Measuring opportunity in U.S. higher education

Hoxby, Caroline M.; Turner, Sarah E.;
2019
Type: Graue Literatur; Non-commercial literature; Arbeitspapier; Working Paper;
Availability:

---

3. Measuring opportunity in U.S. higher education

Hoxby, Caroline M.; Turner, Sarah E.;
2019
Type: Graue Literatur; Non-commercial literature; Arbeitspapier; Working Paper;
Availability: Link Link
Citations: 5 (based on OpenCitations) Cited By

---

4. All School Finance Equalizations are Not Created Equal

abstract

Public school finance equalization programs can be characterized by the change they impose on the tax price of an additional dollar of local school spending. I calculate the tax price of spending for each school district in the United States for 1972, 1982, and 1992. I find that using the actual tax prices (rather than treating school finance equalizations as events) resolves apparently conflicting evidence about the effects of equalizations on per-pupil spending. Depending on whether they impose tax prices greater than or less than one, school finance equalizations either enjoy increased spending under most equalization schemes, but they actually lose spending under the strongest schemes such as those that exist in California and New Mexico. More importantly, regardless of whether an equalization levels down or up, it should be understood as a tax system on districts' spending. I show that school finance equalization schemes have properties that are generally considered undesirable: they raise revenue on a base that is itself a function of the school finance system and they assign tax prices so that people with a high demand for education are penalized relative to otherwise identical people with the same income. I discuss some simple, familiar schemes that do not have these undesirable properties, yet can achieve similar redistribution

Hoxby, Caroline M.;
2021
Availability: Link

---

5. Peer Effects in the Classroom : Learning from Gender and Race Variation

abstract

Peer effects are potentially important for understanding the optimal organization of schools, jobs, and neighborhoods, but finding evidence is difficult because people are selected into peer groups based, in part, on their unobservable characteristics. I identify the effects of peers whom a child encounters in the classroom using sources of variation that are credibly idiosyncratic, such as changes in the gender and racial composition of a grade in a school in adjacent years. I use specification tests, including one based on randomizing the order of years, to confirm that the variation I use is not generated by time trends or other non-idiosyncratic forces. I find that students are affected by the achievement level of their peers: a credibly exogenous change of 1 point in peers' reading scores raises a student's own score between 0.15 and 0.4 points, depending on the specification. Although I find little evidence that peer effects are generally non-linear, I do find that peer effects are stronger intra-race and that some effects do not operate through peers' achievement. For instance, both males and females perform better in math in classrooms that are more female despite the fact that females' math performance is about the same as that of males

Hoxby, Caroline M.;
2021
Availability: Link

---

6. Would School Choice Change the Teaching Profession?

abstract

This paper investigates whether schools that face stronger choice-based incentives have greater demand for certain teacher characteristics and (if so) which teacher characteristics. Schools that face choice-based incentives should demand teachers who raise a schools' ability to attract students. Thus, in the long term, school choice would affect who became (and remained) a teacher if it affected schools' demand for certain teacher characteristics. Using data on traditional forms of choice (Tiebout choice, choice of private schools) and a new survey of charter school teachers, this paper finds evidence that suggests that school choice would change the teaching profession by demanding teachers with higher quality college education, more math and science skills, and a greater degree of effort and independence

Hoxby, Caroline M.;
2021
Availability: Link

---

7. Political Jurisdictions in Heterogeneous Communities

abstract

We investigate how the number and size of local political jurisdictions in an area is determined. Our model focuses on the tradeoff between the benefits of economies of scale and the costs of a heterogeneous population. We consider heterogeneity in income, race, ethnicity, and religion, and we test the model using American school districts, school attendance areas, municipalities, and special districts. Using both cross-sectional and panel analysis, we find evidence of a significant tradeoff between economies of scale and racial heterogeneity. We find weaker tradeoffs between economies of scale and income or ethnic heterogeneity. That is, it appears that people are willing to sacrifice the most, in terms of economies of scale, in order to avoid racial heterogeneity in their jurisdiction

Alesina, Alberto; Baqir, Reza; Hoxby, Caroline M.;
2021
Availability: Link

---

8. The Returns to the Federal Tax Credits for Higher Education

abstract

Three tax credits benefit households who pay tuition and fees for higher education. The credits have been justified as an investment: generating more educated people and thus more earnings and externalities associated with education. The credits have also been justified purely as tax cuts to benefit the middle class. In 2009, the generosity of and eligibility for the tax credits expanded enormously so that their 2011 cost was $25 billion. Using selected, de-identified data from the population of potential filers, we show how the credits are distributed across households with different incomes. We estimate the causal effects of the federal tax credits using two empirical strategies (regression kink and simulated instruments) which we show to be strong and very credibly valid for this application. The latter strategy exploits the massive expansion of the credits in 2009. We present causal estimates of the credits' effects on postsecondary attendance, the type of college attended, the resources experienced in college, tuition paid, and financial aid received. We discuss the implications of our findings for society's return on investment and for the tax credits' budget neutrality over the long term (whether higher lifetime earnings generate sufficient taxes to recoup the tax expenditures). We assess several explanations why the credits appear to have negligible causal effects

Bulman, George; Hoxby, Caroline M.;
2021
Availability: Link

---

9. Is There an Equity-Efficiency Trade-Off in School Finance? Tiebout and a Theory of the Local Public Goods Producer

abstract

New empirical work shows the degree of competition among public providers of local public goods or between public and private providers of local public goods matters. This evidence needs a theory of the local public goods producer. Tiebout's hypothesis spawned a literature that gives local public economics a useful theory of the consumer which can generate a theory of the local public goods producer. This potential has remained largely undeveloped apart from Tiebout's vision of the local public goods producer as an entrepreneur, which is unrealistic because local public goods are nonverifiable. The Tiebout mechanism does not operate in alternative models of the local public goods producer, such as bureaucracy and agenda models. None of these models is useful for predicting how local public goods producers react to policies that change the structure of local public finance. This paper builds a theory of the producer that draws upon Tiebout's mechanism and the theory of incentives for regulation. I find that Tiebout's mechanism generates information that can be used in regulatory schemes to achieve lower costs for any given provision of local public goods. Thus, we face a fundamental trade-off between promoting equitable consumption of the public good and promoting efficiency in production of the public good. This trade-off exists even when equity in consumption generates positive externalities, as is often suggested of the consumption of schooling. I present evidence that when the Tiebout mechanism for schools is weakened by state-level school funding, per-pupil costs rise and the growth of educational attainment falls. This implies that losses from inefficient production generally outweigh gains from equalized consumption

Hoxby, Caroline M.;
2021
Availability: Link

---

10. The Productivity of Schools and Other Local Public Goods Providers

abstract

I construct an agency model of local public goods producers with special reference to public schools. The model assumes that households make Tiebout choices among jurisdictions, but it has more realistic assumptions about information and the cost of residential mobility. I examine producers' effort and rent under local property tax finance and centralized finance. I show that, if there are a sufficient number of jurisdictions to choose among, conventional local property tax finance substantially reduces the agency problem and associated loss of productivity. Specifically, I demonstrate that local property tax finance can attain about as much productivity as a social planner with centralized finance can, even if the social planner is armed with more information that a real social planner could plausibly have. The key insight is that decentralized Tiebout choices make some information the social planner would need verifiable and other information unnecessary

Hoxby, Caroline M.;
2021
Availability: Link

---

Load More