IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/use/tkiwps/1314.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition for a better future? Effects of competition on child care quality

Author

Listed:
  • Y.E. Akgündüz
  • J. Plantenga

Abstract

Little is known about how competition affects child care centers’ quality. This paper examines the impact of competition on the quality of Dutch child care centers. The results show that high density of child care centers in an area improves scores in quality assessment measures. The positive relationship persists when either the density of primary schools or births in the area are used to instrument the density of child care centers. The effects of competition are exclusive to child care centers that operate in a private market. Despite concerns about the parents’ ability to distinguish between low and high quality child care, market competition in the Dutch child care sector appears to improve quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Y.E. Akgündüz & J. Plantenga, 2013. "Competition for a better future? Effects of competition on child care quality," Working Papers 13-14, Utrecht School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:use:tkiwps:1314
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/290033/13-14.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pierre Koning & Joëlle Noailly & Sabine Visser, 2007. "Do Not-For-Profits Make a Difference in Social Services? A Survey Study," De Economist, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 251-270, September.
    2. Milton Friedman, 1997. "Public Schools: Make Them Private," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(3), pages 341-344.
    3. Martin R. West & Ludger Woessmann, 2010. "'Every Catholic Child in a Catholic School': Historical Resistance to State Schooling, Contemporary Private Competition and Student Achievement across Countries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(546), pages 229-255, August.
    4. Nalebuff, Barry J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1983. "Information, Competition, and Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(2), pages 278-283, May.
    5. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Nathaniel Hilger & Emmanuel Saez & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach & Danny Yagan, 2011. "How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project Star," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(4), pages 1593-1660.
    6. Dee, Thomas S., 1998. "Competition and the quality of public schools," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 419-427, October.
    7. Nicholas Bloom & Carol Propper & Stephan Seiler & John Van Reenen, 2015. "The Impact of Competition on Management Quality: Evidence from Public Hospitals," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(2), pages 457-489.
    8. James H. Stock & Motohiro Yogo, 2002. "Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression," NBER Technical Working Papers 0284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Cohen-Zada, D., 2009. "An alternative instrument for private school competition," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 29-37, February.
    10. Klaus M. Schmidt, 1997. "Managerial Incentives and Product Market Competition," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(2), pages 191-213.
    11. Bettendorf, Leon J.H. & Jongen, Egbert L.W. & Muller, Paul, 2015. "Childcare subsidies and labour supply — Evidence from a large Dutch reform," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 112-123.
    12. Kira R. Fabrizio & Nancy L. Rose & Catherine D. Wolfram, 2007. "Do Markets Reduce Costs? Assessing the Impact of Regulatory Restructuring on US Electric Generation Efficiency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1250-1277, September.
    13. Nickell, Stephen J, 1996. "Competition and Corporate Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(4), pages 724-746, August.
    14. Gordon Cleveland & Michael Krashinsky, 2009. "The nonprofit advantage: Producing quality in thick and thin child care markets," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 440-462.
    15. Agasisti, Tommaso, 2011. "How competition affects schools' performances: Does specification matter?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 259-261, March.
    16. Naci Mocan, 2007. "Can consumers detect lemons? An empirical analysis of information asymmetry in the market for child care," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 20(4), pages 743-780, October.
    17. Sandstrom, F. Mikael & Bergstrom, Fredrik, 2005. "School vouchers in practice: competition will not hurt you," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 351-380, February.
    18. Joëlle Noailly & Sabine Visser & Paul Grout, 2007. "The impact of market forces on the provision of childcare: Insights from the 2005 Childcare Act in the Netherlands," CPB Memorandum 176, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    19. David M. Blau, 1997. "The Production of Quality in Child Care Centers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(2), pages 354-387.
    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. Tapio Räsänen & Eva Österbacka, 2024. "Subsidizing private childcare in a universal regime," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 199-230, March.
    2. Kabátek, Jan, 2015. "Essays on public policy and household decision making," Other publications TiSEM 8cdb178e-ad98-42e5-a7e1-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.

    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. Y.E. Akgündüz & E. Jongen & P.P.M. Leseman & J. Plantenga, 2013. "Cutting from the future? Impact of a subsidy reduction on child care quality in the Netherlands," Working Papers 13-18, Utrecht School of Economics.
    2. Matthew Backus, 2019. "Why is Productivity Correlated with Competition?," NBER Working Papers 25748, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Goergen, Marc & Manjon, Miguel C. & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Recent developments in German corporate governance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 175-193, September.
    4. Xavier Vives, 2008. "Innovation And Competitive Pressure," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(3), pages 419-469, December.
    5. Priks, Mikael, 2011. "Firm competition and incentive pay: Rent seeking at work," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 154-156.
    6. Kirstein, Roland & Kirstein, Annette, 2004. "Inefficient Intra-Firm Incentives Can Stabilize Cartels in Cournot Oligopolies," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 2004-09, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.
    7. Waisman, Maya, 2013. "Product market competition and the cost of bank loans: Evidence from state antitakeover laws," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 4721-4737.
    8. Karuna, Christo, 2007. "Industry product market competition and managerial incentives," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2-3), pages 275-297, July.
    9. Nicholas Bloom & Carol Propper & Stephan Seiler & John Van Reenen, 2015. "The Impact of Competition on Management Quality: Evidence from Public Hospitals," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 82(2), pages 457-489.
    10. Matthew Backus, 2020. "Why Is Productivity Correlated With Competition?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(6), pages 2415-2444, November.
    11. Van Reenen, John, 2011. "Does competition raise productivity through improving management quality?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 306-316, May.
    12. Emre Akgunduz & Egbert Jongen & Paul P.M. Leseman & Janneke Plantenga, 2015. "Quasi-experimental evidence on the relation between child care subsidies and child care quality," CPB Discussion Paper 310, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    13. Ugur, Mehmet & Solomon, Edna & Zeynalov, Ayaz, 2022. "Leverage, competition and financial distress hazard: Implications for capital structure in the presence of agency costs," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    14. Schiantarelli, Fabio, 2005. "Product Market Regulation and Macroeconomic Performance: A Review of Cross Country Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 1791, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Vidhi Chhaochharia & Yaniv Grinstein & Gustavo Grullon & Roni Michaely, 2017. "Product Market Competition and Internal Governance: Evidence from the Sarbanes–Oxley Act," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1405-1424, May.
    16. Baghdasaryan, Delia & la Cour, Lisbeth, 2013. "Competition, ownership and productivity. A panel analysis of Czech firms," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 86-100.
    17. Alejandro Robinson Cortés, 2013. "Eficiencia Interna y Competencia de Mercado en Oligopolio," Undergraduate theses (Spanish) tesl001, CIDE, División de Economía.
    18. Januszewski, Silke I. & Koke, Jens & Winter, Joachim K., 2002. "Product market competition, corporate governance and firm performance: an empirical analysis for Germany," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 299-332, September.
    19. Emre Akgunduz & Egbert Jongen & Paul P.M. Leseman & Janneke Plantenga, 2015. "Quasi-experimental evidence on the relation between child care subsidies and child care quality," CPB Discussion Paper 310.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    20. Tinaikar, Surjit & Xu, Bo, 2023. "Does competition exacerbate investment inefficiencies? Evidence from Japanese firms," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 35-53.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    child care; ECEC; pedagogic quality; competition;
    All these keywords.

    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:use:tkiwps:1314. 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: Marina Muilwijk (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eiruunl.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.