Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

How Far is the East? Educational Performance in Eastern Europe

Contents:

Author Info

  • Alina Botezat

    () (Department of Economics, Al. I. Cuza University of Iasi, Rumänien)

  • Ruben R. Seiberlich

    () (Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany)

Abstract

When the Soviet Union collapsed a transition process started in Eastern Europe. This included a number of reforms to adapt the educational system to the new requirements of the job market. To assess the educational systems in Eastern Europe, this paper takes a look at the gap in PISA test scores between different countries. Using PISA 2006 data we disentangle the effects that explain the gap between Finland, the best performing country, and seven Eastern European countries, as well as, between Eastern European countries. The methodology applied in this paper is a semiparametric version of the threefold Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, an approach which is not yet used in the research regarding the differences in school outcomes. Our results show that in all cases the differences in characteristics does not explain much of the gap. The return effect is the driving force of the differences in test scores. Under our identifying assumption, our results therefore indicate that the PISA test score gap can mainly be attributed to the different efficiency of school systems and are not due to better characteristics of students in a particular country. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the gap is smaller for better students indicating that, especially for poor performing students, the efficiency of Eastern European schools is behind the efficiency of Finnish schools.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.wiwi.uni-konstanz.de/workingpaperseries/WP_Botezat-Seiberlich-15-11.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of Konstanz in its series Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz with number 2011-15.

as in new window
Length: 38 pages
Date of creation: 22 May 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:knz:dpteco:1115

Contact details of provider:
Postal: D-78457 Konstanz
Phone: +49-7531-88-2566/2565
Fax: +49-7531-88-4135
Web page: http://www.wiwi.uni-konstanz.de/fb
More information through EDIRC

Order Information:
Web: http://www.wiwi.uni-konstanz.de/fb

Related research

Keywords: PISA; test score gap; decomposition; semiparametric; propensity score matching;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Gabriela Schütz & Heinrich W. Ursprung & Ludger Wö�mann, 2008. "Education Policy and Equality of Opportunity," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 279-308, 05.
  2. Christian Bjørnskov & Niklas Potrafke, 2011. "Politics and privatization in Central and Eastern Europe," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 19(2), pages 201-230, 04.
  3. Ammermuller, Andreas & Heijke, Hans & Wo[ss]mann, Ludger, 2005. "Schooling quality in Eastern Europe: Educational production during transition," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 579-599, October.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. O lucrare la mai multe conferin?e?
    by Alina Botezat in Alina Botezat Blog on 2011-12-30 09:32:00
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Baranov, Igor N., 2012. "Quality of Secondary Education in Russia: Between Soviet Legacy and Challenges of Global Competitiveness," Working Papers 538, Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:knz:dpteco:1115

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Gundula Hadjiani).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.