IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp2534.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Efficiency Costs of De-tracking Secondary Schools

Author

Listed:
  • Ariga, Kenn

    (Kyoto University)

  • Brunello, Giorgio

    (University of Padova)

  • Iwahashi, Roki

    (University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa)

  • Rocco, Lorenzo

    (University of Padova)

Abstract

During the postwar period, many countries have de-tracked their secondary schools, based on the view that early tracking was unfair. What are the efficiency costs, if any, of de-tracking schools? To answer this question, we develop a two skills - two jobs model with a frictional labour market, where new school graduates need to actively search for their best match. We compute optimal tracking length and the output gain/loss associated to the gap between actual and optimal tracking length. Using a sample of 18 countries, we find that: a) actual tracking length is often longer than optimal, which might call for some efficient de-tracking; b) the output loss of having a tracking length longer or shorter than optimal is sizeable, and close to 2 percent of total net output.

Suggested Citation

  • Ariga, Kenn & Brunello, Giorgio & Iwahashi, Roki & Rocco, Lorenzo, 2006. "On the Efficiency Costs of De-tracking Secondary Schools," IZA Discussion Papers 2534, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2534
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp2534.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Rogerson & Robert Shimer & Randall Wright, 2004. "Search-Theoretic Models of the Labor Market-A Survey," NBER Working Papers 10655, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Ariga, Kenn & Brunello, Giorgio & Iwahashi, Roki & Rocco, Lorenzo, 2005. "Why Is the Timing of School Tracking So Heterogeneous?," IZA Discussion Papers 1854, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Albrecht, James W. & Gautier, Pieter A. & Vroman, Susan B., 2003. "Matching with multiple applications," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 67-70, January.
    4. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1992. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Public Schools in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(1), pages 1-40, February.
    5. James J. Heckman & Jora Stixrud & Sergio Urzua, 2006. "The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labor Market Outcomes and Social Behavior," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 411-482, July.
    6. E. Paul Durrenberger, 2005. "Labour," Chapters, in: James G. Carrier (ed.), A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, chapter 8, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Eric A. Hanushek & Ludger Wössmann, 2006. "Does Educational Tracking Affect Performance and Inequality? Differences- in-Differences Evidence Across Countries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(510), pages 63-76, March.
    8. Lamo, Ana & Messina, Julián & Wasmer, Etienne, 2011. "Are specific skills an obstacle to labor market adjustment?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 240-256, April.
    9. Roland Benabou, 2002. "Tax and Education Policy in a Heterogeneous-Agent Economy: What Levels of Redistribution Maximize Growth and Efficiency?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 481-517, March.
    10. Giorgio Brunello & Daniele Checchi, 2007. "Does school tracking affect equality of opportunity? New international evidence [‘Educational opportunities and the role of institutions’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 22(52), pages 782-861.
    11. Eran Yashiv, 2000. "The Determinants of Equilibrium Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1297-1322, December.
    12. Hanushek, Eric A. & Leung, Charles Ka Yui & Yilmaz, Kuzey, 2003. "Redistribution through education and other transfer mechanisms," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(8), pages 1719-1750, November.
    13. David Card & Alan Krueger, 1990. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Public Schools in the United States," Working Papers 645, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    14. Brunello, Giorgio & Giannini, Massimo & Ariga, Kenn, 2004. "The Optimal Timing of School Tracking," IZA Discussion Papers 995, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Costas Meghir & Mårten Palme, 1999. "Assessing the effect of schooling on earnings using a social experiment," IFS Working Papers W99/10, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    16. Christopher Neilson & Michael Dinerstein & Sebastián Otero, 2020. "The Equilibrium Effects of Public Provision in Education Markets: Evidence from a Public School Expansion Policy," Working Papers 645, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    17. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    18. Caroline Hoxby, 2000. "Peer Effects in the Classroom: Learning from Gender and Race Variation," NBER Working Papers 7867, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Alain Delacroix & Shouyong Shi, 2006. "Directed Search On The Job And The Wage Ladder," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(2), pages 651-699, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Jérémie Gignoux, 2014. "The Measurement of Educational Inequality: Achievement and Opportunity," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 210-246.
    2. Antonio Romero-Medina & Matteo Triossi, 2013. "Games with capacity manipulation: incentives and Nash equilibria," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(3), pages 701-720, September.
    3. Volker Meier & Gabriela Schütz, 2007. "The Economics of Tracking and Non-Tracking," ifo Working Paper Series 50, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    4. Brunello, Giorgio & Fabbri, Daniele & Fort, Margherita, 2009. "Years of Schooling, Human Capital and the Body Mass Index of European Females," IZA Discussion Papers 4667, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Pamela Giustinelli, 2016. "Group Decision Making With Uncertain Outcomes: Unpacking Child–Parent Choice Of The High School Track," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(2), pages 573-602, May.
    6. Florentino Felgueroso & Maria Gutiérrez-Domènech & Sergi Jiménez-Martín, 2014. "Dropout trends and educational reforms: the role of the LOGSE in Spain," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-24, December.
    7. Felgueroso, Florentino & GutiŽrrez-Domenech, María & JimŽnez Mart’n, Sergi, 2013. "Por quŽ el abandono escolar se ha mantenido tan elevado en Espa–a en las œltimas dos dŽcadas? El papel de la Ley de Educaci—n (LOGSE)," Economic Reports 02-2013, FEDEA.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. C. Kirabo Jackson, 2010. "Do Students Benefit from Attending Better Schools? Evidence from Rule-based Student Assignments in Trinidad and Tobago," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(549), pages 1399-1429, December.
    2. Roller, Marcus & Steinberg, Daniel, 2020. "The distributional effects of early school stratification - non-parametric evidence from Germany," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    3. Marchionni, Mariana & Vazquez, Emmanuel & Pinto, Florencia, 2012. "Desigualdad educativa en la Argentina. Análisis en base a los datos PISA 2009 [Education Inequality in Argentina. An analysis based on PISA 2009 data]," MPRA Paper 56420, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Sari Pekkala Kerr & Tuomas Pekkarinen & Roope Uusitalo, 2013. "School Tracking and Development of Cognitive Skills," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(3), pages 577-602.
    5. James J. Heckman & Dimitriy V. Masterov, 2007. "The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 29(3), pages 446-493.
    6. Marchionni, Mariana & Pinto, Florencia & Vazquez, Emmanuel, 2013. "Determinantes de la desigualdad en el desempeño educativo en la Argentina [Determinants of the inequality in PISA test scores in Argentina]," MPRA Paper 56421, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Marisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo, 2011. "On the optimal allocation of students when peer effects are at work: tracking vs. mixing," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 31-52, March.
    8. Volker Meier & Gabriela Schütz, 2007. "The Economics of Tracking and Non-Tracking," ifo Working Paper Series 50, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    9. Mühlenweg, Andrea Maria, 2007. "Educational Effects of Early or Later Secondary School Tracking in Germany," ZEW Discussion Papers 07-079, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    10. Nicole Schneeweis & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2008. "Peer effects in Austrian schools," Studies in Empirical Economics, in: Christian Dustmann & Bernd Fitzenberger & Stephen Machin (ed.), The Economics of Education and Training, pages 133-155, Springer.
    11. Jakubowski, Maciej & Pokropek, Artur, 2015. "Reading achievement progress across countries," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 77-88.
    12. Andreas Ammermueller, 2013. "Institutional Features of Schooling Systems and Educational Inequality: Cross-Country Evidence From PIRLS and PISA," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 14(2), pages 190-213, May.
    13. Fertig, Michael, 2003. "Educational Production, Endogenous Peer Group Formation and Class Composition – Evidence from the PISA 2000 Study," IZA Discussion Papers 714, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Galenianos, Manolis & Kircher, Philipp, 2009. "Directed search with multiple job applications," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 445-471, March.
    15. Bonin, Holger, 2017. "The Potential Economic Benefits of Education of Migrants in the EU," IZA Research Reports 75, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Piero Cipollone & Alfonso Rosolia, 2007. "Social Interactions in High School: Lessons from an Earthquake," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 948-965, June.
    17. Thomas B. King, 2005. "Labor productivity and job-market flows: trends, cycles, and correlations," Supervisory Policy Analysis Working Papers 2005-04, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    18. Lisa Grazzini, 2016. "The Importance of the Quality of Education: Some Determinants and its Effects on Earning Returns and Economic Growth," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(2), pages 43-82.
    19. Megalokonomou, Rigissa & Goulas, Sofoklis, 2015. "Knowing who you are - The Effect of Feedback Information on Short and Long Term Outcomes," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1075, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    20. Seshadri, Ananth & Yuki, Kazuhiro, 2004. "Equity and efficiency effects of redistributive policies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(7), pages 1415-1447, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    mismatch; school tracking;

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp2534. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    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.