Essays on Public Finance and the Economics of Education PDF Download

Author: Ethan Jesse Krohn
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Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This dissertation includes three chapters public finance and the economics of education. It examines questions regarding the less tangible inputs into the education production function including school climate, morale, and peer effects. In the first chapter, I examine the impacts of school bond measures in California. California school districts spent over $6 billion in capital spending in 2014 and voted on 1,966 school bond measures between 1995 and 2016 meant to finance capital spending, yet it is unclear from the literature what effect capital spending has on student outcomes or whether there are other effects caused by passing school bond measures. I expand this literature by looking at the effect of passing school bond measures on standardized test scores in California using a dynamic regression discontinuity design. I find considerable increases in capital spending after a bond measure passes that is largely explained by spending on construction. I also find a large positive and immediate divergence in test scores and in proficiency rates between the districts close to the vote-share threshold that pass and that fail to pass school bond measures. This divergence starts the year of the elections and is difficult to explain based on the change in capital spending. Furthermore, this effect lasts several years. I further explore this effect by looking at the effects on teacher and staff turnover. My second chapter is a descriptive study of the birth impacts of the dragon year of the Chinese zodiac. In Chinese culture, children born during the year of the dragon are thought to be luckier and more successful. This leads to increases in fertility for Chinese parents in that year as well as possible changes in how those children are raised. Several studies have argued either that differences between children born during the dragon years are driven by increases in parental involvement or that dragon years can be used as a source of exogenous changes in Chinese populations. I explore these findings by looking at birth outcomes to Chinese mothers in the United States. I find that children born to Chinese mothers during dragon years are healthier at birth than those born to Chinese mothers in other zodiac years. I also find that there is selection into Chinese mothers who have children during dragon years with those mothers tending to be more educated and have had more previous children. In the third chapter, I investigate the effects of peer quality from an increase in classroom diversity using variation induced by the Chinese zodiac. In Chinese culture, children born during the year of the dragon are thought to be luckier and more successful. Other work has shown that there are differences between Chinese children born during the year of the dragon and those born in other zodiac years, and that in China parents of dragon children are more involved in their schooling. There are also increases in fertility to Chinese parents during the year of the dragon. Here I look first at the combined peer effects from the increase in the number of Chinese students and the the differences in Chinese students during dragon years. Then I isolate how those differences affects their peers by controlling for the percentage of Chinese students. Using standardized test scores in California, I find that exposure to Chinese students born during the year of the dragon lowers the standardized test scores of other students in their schools. This is effect is particularly pronounced in Hispanic students.