Webinar: Angela Zheng, NYU: The Valuation of Local School Quality under School Choice

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  • Melbourne Institute Seminar Series

Title: The Valuation of Local School Quality under School Choice

Abstract: This paper studies how school choice affects housing markets. Previous work has documented that school attendance zones lead to the capitalization of school quality into house prices. However, school choice, such as charter schools, which do not have catchment areas, break the link between residential location and school attendance. In turn, recent expansions of school choice should weaken the link between house prices and zoned school quality. To quantify this, I combine an event study that exploits time variation in the entry of charter schools with a boundary discontinuity design. I find that, on average, school choice decreases the willingness to pay for a standard deviation increase in school quality by 9 percentage points. My results show that charter schools  induce changes in neighbourhood sorting as attendance zone boundaries lose their importance.

Presenter: Angela Zhang, New York University

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