IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v140y2025i3p2329-2379..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Works and for Whom? Effectiveness and Efficiency of School Capital Investments Across the U.S.

Author

Listed:
  • Barbara Biasi
  • Julien Lafortune
  • David Schönholzer

Abstract

This article identifies which investments in school facilities help students and which are valued by homeowners. Using novel data on school district bonds, test scores, and house prices across 29 U.S. states and a research design based on narrowly decided elections with staggered timing, we find that increased capital spending in schools significantly improves test scores and is efficient on average. However, the effects vary widely depending on the type of project and the characteristics of the school district. Investments in essential infrastructure, such as HVAC systems or pollutant removal, yield notable improvements in student performance, while expenditures on athletic facilities show no measurable academic benefit. Socioeconomically disadvantaged districts gain disproportionately from capital investments, even after accounting for project type, yet these districts typically underinvest in such projects.

Suggested Citation

  • Barbara Biasi & Julien Lafortune & David Schönholzer, 2025. "What Works and for Whom? Effectiveness and Efficiency of School Capital Investments Across the U.S.," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 140(3), pages 2329-2379.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:140:y:2025:i:3:p:2329-2379.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjaf013
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:140:y:2025:i:3:p:2329-2379.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.