Iftikhar Hussain, University of Sussex (visiting Birgitta Rabe)
Presented by:
Using a well established disclosure regime, in a setting where there is some limited school choice, this paper investigates the impact of school quality information shocks on both house prices and school choice. Importantly, for the information treatment used in this study – inspection ratings – I establish that (i) students enrolled in a school experiencing an uprating make larger test score gains and (ii) these test score gains are especially large for disadvantaged students. I exploit exogenous temporal variation in the release of ratings to identify their impact along the full school quality distribution. I find robust evidence of the causal impact of changes in ratings on both house prices as well as families’ school choices. The hedonic impact is especially large for homes located near schools serving advantaged students. There is almost no impact for units located near disadvantaged schools; potential explanations include consumer credit constraints and excess capacity at such schools. However, these two explanations are ruled out by the school choice analysis: uprated schools serving disadvantaged students experiences no increase in demand from local families even when these schools are in their choice set.
Date & time:
April 18, 2018 12:00 pm - April 18, 2018 1:00 pm
Venue:
2N2.5B.24
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