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Student effort and educational attainment: Using the England football team to identify the education production function

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  • Robert Metcalfe
  • Simon Burgess
  • Steven Proud

Abstract

We use a sharp, exogenous and repeated change in the value of leisure to identify the impact of student effort on educational achievement. The treatment arises from the partial overlap of the world’s major international football tournaments with the exam period in England. Our data enable a clean difference-in-difference design. Performance is measured using the high-stakes tests that all students take at the end of compulsory schooling. We find a strongly significant effect: the average impact of a fall in effort is 0.12 SDs of student performance, significantly larger for male and disadvantaged students, as high as many educational policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Metcalfe & Simon Burgess & Steven Proud, 2011. "Student effort and educational attainment: Using the England football team to identify the education production function," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 11/276, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
  • Handle: RePEc:bri:cmpowp:11/276
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    File URL: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2011/wp276.pdf
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    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. The impact of poor scheduling of international football tournaments on English GCSE results
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2012-01-26 21:08:00

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    3. Richard Duhautois & Bastien Drut, 2017. "Is work duration in France affected by football tournaments?," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 14-19.
    4. Beattie, Graham & Laliberté, Jean-William P. & Michaud-Leclerc, Catherine & Oreopoulos, Philip, 2019. "What sets college thrivers and divers apart? A contrast in study habits, attitudes, and mental health," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 50-53.
    5. Burgess, Simon & Metcalfe, Robert & Sadoff, Sally, 2021. "Understanding the response to financial and non-financial incentives in education: Field experimental evidence using high-stakes assessments," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    6. Kuehn, Zoe & Landeras, Pedro, 2012. "Study Time and Scholarly Achievement in PISA," Working Papers 2012-02, FEDEA.
    7. Beland, Louis-Philippe & Murphy, Richard, 2016. "Ill Communication: Technology, distraction & student performance," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 61-76.
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    9. Tin-chun Lin & Subir Bandyopadhyay, 2019. "Are level of preparation and lecture attendance related in the role of influencing students' academic performance?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(3), pages 2040-2051.
    10. Sofia Izquierdo Sanchez & Caroline Elliott & Robert Simmons, 2016. "Substitution between leisure activities: a quasi-natural experiment using sports viewing and cinema attendance," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(40), pages 3848-3860, August.
    11. Steven Proud, 2014. "Resits in Higher Education: Merely a Bar to Jump Over, or Do They Give a Pedagogical `Leg Up’?," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 14/645, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
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    Keywords

    student effort; educational achievement; schools;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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