期刊名称：Discussion Papers / Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration
印刷版ISSN：0804-6824
出版年度：2009
卷号：2009
出版社：Bergen
摘要：Among policymakers, educators and economists there remains a strong, sometimes
heated, debate on the extent to which good schools matter. This is seen, for instance, in
the strong trend towards establishing accountability systems in education in many
countries across the world. In this paper, in line with some recent studies, we value
school quality using house prices. We, however, adopt a rather different approach to
other work, using a policy experiment regarding pupils’ choice to attend high schools to
identify the relationship between house prices and school performance. We exploit a
change in school choice policy that took place in Oslo county in 1997, where the school
authorities opened up the possibility for every pupil to apply to any of the high schools in
the county without having to live in the school’s catchment area (the rule that applied
before 1997). Our estimates show evidence that parents substantially value better
performing schools since the sensitivity of housing valuations to school performance falls
significantly by over 50% following the school choice reform
