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Capitalizing Performance of 'Free' Schools and the Difficulty of Reforming School Attendance Boundaries

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School attendance boundaries are a contentious issue in New Zealand, and have been relaxed and re-imposed depending upon political sentiment. Critics contend that a supposedly egalitarian state school system becomes one of selection by mortgage, with the value of ‘free’ schools capitalized into property prices. Attendance boundaries restrict the schooling opportunity set facing a student, who typically is unable to study at nearby high-performing schools if they live outside their boundary. We relate schooling opportunity sets to sales prices of over 8000 houses in Christchurch, controlling for dwelling attributes, neighborhood characteristics and geographic accessibility to a wide range of services. Our model explains over three-quarters of the variation in prices and we use this model to predict property prices if there were no attendance boundaries. Abolishing boundaries expands most schooling opportunity sets and predicted house prices generally rise. But prices would fall in some higher income neighborhoods with highly educated residents, who are likely to oppose reform of school attendance boundaries.

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  • John Gibson & Geua Boe-Gibson, 2014. "Capitalizing Performance of 'Free' Schools and the Difficulty of Reforming School Attendance Boundaries," Working Papers in Economics 14/08, University of Waikato.
  • Handle: RePEc:wai:econwp:14/08
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    File URL: https://repec.its.waikato.ac.nz/wai/econwp/1408.pdf
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    1. Brunner, Eric & Sonstelie, Jon, 2003. "Homeowners, property values, and the political economy of the school voucher," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 239-257, September.
    2. Clark Jeremy & Kim Bonggeun, 2012. "The Effect of Neighborhood Diversity on Volunteering: Evidence From New Zealand," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-49, March.
    3. Ian Davidoff & Andrew Leigh, 2008. "How Much do Public Schools Really Cost? Estimating the Relationship between House Prices and School Quality," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(265), pages 193-206, June.
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    1. Zone wars
      by Eric Crampton in Offsetting Behaviour on 2014-07-18 08:00:00

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    Cited by:

    1. Norman Gemmell & Patrick Nolan & Grant Scobie, 2017. "Public sector productivity: Quality adjusting sector-level data on New Zealand schools," Working Papers 2017/02, New Zealand Productivity Commission.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    attendance boundaries; house prices; school quality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand

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