Positive, normative and methodological questions in the economics of education
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The Economics of Education is a field that deals with an education system that is funded and administered at different levels. For example, states provide funds for public universities, schools get funding from local taxes, and experimental designs deal with different administrative levels (e.g. school, district, state). The existence of different levels in the educational systems raises interesting questions. Therefore, this thesis studies positive, normative and methodological questions that arise from the level design of education systems. First, an interesting question is how different education systems interact with each other. Regarding this positive question, the first thesis chapter looks at the interaction of public universities at the state level. In particular, it estimates the effect on in-state tuition rates of interstate Tuition Reciprocity Agreements (TRAs) that allow students from out-of-state to get in-state tuition rates. The results suggest that TRAs increase tuition rates and education quality. Therefore, market integration and quality competition would explain a part of the "always increasing tuition" phenomenon in higher education. The second chapter of the thesis studies the normative question of optimal taxation on opportunity inputs. In particular, the chapter uses tools from the Optimal Taxation literature and introduces a Social Welfare Function with equal opportunity concerns. The theoretical results suggest that equal opportunity concerns imply taxation on opportunity inputs. The optimal linear scheme includes an important transfer of resources to school districts. However, the transfer of resources is taxed away when private/local funding of education increases. Therefore, the results support the normative principle of redistribution of local school district revenue, when society has equal opportunity concerns. Finally, the third chapter addresses some issues of experimental research. In the education literature, experiments usually take place at the school or district level, which counteracts the preference of researchers for covariates balance. That preference has resulted in researchers using different re-randomization schemes (constraints on the treatment allocations allowed). The re-randomization schemes improve the efficiency, but researchers have struggled to understand the implications of re-randomization. As such, the paper clarifies the implications of re-randomization and suggests a re-randomization scheme that preserves asymptotic normality -a key property for statistical testing.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Lara Escalona, Bernardo |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Graduate School of Education. |
| Primary advisor | Bettinger, Eric |
| Primary advisor | Carnoy, Martin |
| Thesis advisor | Bettinger, Eric |
| Thesis advisor | Carnoy, Martin |
| Thesis advisor | Scheuer, Florian |
| Advisor | Scheuer, Florian |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Bernardo Lara Escalona. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Graduate School of Education. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Bernardo Jose Lara Escalona
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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