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Public School Choice: An Economic Analysis

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  • Levon Barseghyan
  • Damon Clark
  • Stephen Coate

Abstract

Public school choice programs give households a free choice of public school and provide schools incentives to compete for students. Proponents of these programs argue that by the usual market logic, choice and competition will improve the quality of the education that schools provide. Critics counter that the usual market logic does not translate easily to schools, since households’ perceptions of school quality depend not only on the efforts of school personnel but also on the composition of the student body (i.e., households have peer preferences). This paper advances this debate by developing and analyzing an economic model of public school choice. To capture the pro-choice argument, the model assumes that a neighborhood enrollment policy that provides schools with no incentives to exert effort is replaced by a prototypical public school choice policy in which households have a free choice of school and schools have incentives to compete for students. To capture the anti-choice argument the model assumes that households have peer preferences. The analysis of the equilibrium of this model generates three findings that highlight potential limitations of choice programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Levon Barseghyan & Damon Clark & Stephen Coate, 2014. "Public School Choice: An Economic Analysis," NBER Working Papers 20701, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20701
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Atila Abdulkadiroğlu & Parag A. Pathak & Jonathan Schellenberg & Christopher R. Walters, 2020. "Do Parents Value School Effectiveness?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(5), pages 1502-1539, May.
    2. Besley, Timothy & Malcomson, James M., 2018. "Competition in public service provision: The role of not-for-profit providers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 158-172.
    3. Maurício Benegas & Márcio Veras Corrêa, 2020. "Educational supply policies: distortions and labor market performance," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 203-239, April.
    4. Timothy Besley & James M. Malcolmson, 2016. "Choice and Competition in Public Service Provision," STICERD - Public Economics Programme Discussion Papers 29, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    5. Anders Böhlmark & Helena Holmlund & Mikael Lindahl, 2016. "Parental choice, neighbourhood segregation or cream skimming? An analysis of school segregation after a generalized choice reform," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 29(4), pages 1155-1190, October.
    6. Mariana Laverde, 2022. "Distance to Schools and Equal Access in School Choice Systems," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 1046, Boston College Department of Economics.
    7. Herresthal, C., 2017. "Performance-Based Rankings and School Quality," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1754, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    8. Mariana Laverde, 2022. "Distance to Schools and Equal Access in School Choice Systems," Working Papers 2022-002, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education

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