ECON 151 Lecture Notes - Lecture 40: Herd Immunity, External Validity, Problem Set
22 Nov 2020
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School performance are not observed by parents or students; Parents may choose on observed characteristics:peer composition, amenities, cleanness If so, voucher/school choice may be a powerful tool to segregate people; Segregation may increase inequality without improvement of performance. Not impossible that poor families make less informed choice than wealthier families; Information may be of better quality for wealthier families. Net effect is unknown and hard to recover. Frequent questions about school choice through voucher programs: Vouchers in columbia does improve achievement. Very possible that school choice would increase polarization of the population into bad and good schools generating large inequalities. Private/public debate depends on the relative quality of both. Not sure that private school are per se better than public schools; Social polarization/stratification would only be measured if studied on a large scale. Small scale voucher problem is unlikely to generate stratification. Studying the effect of a small rct would not be conclusive. Itt (reduced form) problem set #6.
