Work in Progress
"Migration and Competition for Schools: Evidence from Primary Education in England"
(JOB MARKET PAPER)
In this paper, I exploit the 2004 European Union enlargement to examine the impact of the demand for education generated by migrants on school enrollment and the achievement of native students. I predict migrants’ location decision by using a novel instrumental variable that exploits the quasi-random allocation of migrants induced by a dispersal policy implemented in the 1940s. I find that foreign students displace natives from schools, particularly in neighborhoods where schools are at full capacity. My estimates suggest that for every ten non-native students, three natives are displaced. In particular, natives are displaced towards schools with similar value added and distance from home but with a higher proportion of lower performing and disadvantaged peers. However, I find that the presence of migrants is associated with higher test scores among natives. I provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that displaced students generate positive peer effects on the native students to whom they are exposed to following displacement. Overall, the findings suggest that the presence of migrants have a net positive effect on the educational outcomes of natives.
(JOB MARKET PAPER)
In this paper, I exploit the 2004 European Union enlargement to examine the impact of the demand for education generated by migrants on school enrollment and the achievement of native students. I predict migrants’ location decision by using a novel instrumental variable that exploits the quasi-random allocation of migrants induced by a dispersal policy implemented in the 1940s. I find that foreign students displace natives from schools, particularly in neighborhoods where schools are at full capacity. My estimates suggest that for every ten non-native students, three natives are displaced. In particular, natives are displaced towards schools with similar value added and distance from home but with a higher proportion of lower performing and disadvantaged peers. However, I find that the presence of migrants is associated with higher test scores among natives. I provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that displaced students generate positive peer effects on the native students to whom they are exposed to following displacement. Overall, the findings suggest that the presence of migrants have a net positive effect on the educational outcomes of natives.
"Heterogeneous Effects of Mass Academisation in England", with Lorenzo Neri (QMUL)
School of Economics and Finance WP 847, Queen Mary University of London, January 2018.
A reform of the UK education system in 2010 gave public schools the option to become academies, independent entities funded directly from the central government. Once converted, schools have to choose between remaining a standalone academy or joining an academy chain. The majority of studies to date have focused on the impact of becoming an academy on children outcomes, disregarding the possible heterogeneity arising from the adoption of alternative conversion models. Administrative records for primary school age students before and after conversion allow us to shed light on this channel by using a grandfathering instrument for attending a converted school. We find that students in academy chains have better standardised scores with respect to their peers in standalone academies. The use of survey data offers possible explanations for this result: schools joining a chain are more likely to make changes related to managerial practices, whereas standalone academies favour changes related to educational practices.
Media coverage: Royal Economic Society, La Voce
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"The Politics of Asylum Seekers Allocation? Evidence from the UK", with Francesco Fasani (QMUL)
Will the recent European refugee crisis produce lasting political consequences for receiving countries? In this paper, we study the effects of hosting asylum seekers on voting behavior and electoral turnout in the UK - a major destination country for refugees - between 2002 and 2017. Over this period, asylum seekers are assigned to different districts through a dispersal policy and have no say in their allocation. Our empirical analysis is twofold. First, we investigate whether the central government acts strategically in the placement process by testing if local political outcomes determine future assignment of asylum seekers. After finding evidence of politics in the allocation, we study how hosting asylum seekers shapes voting behavior and electoral turnout in local elections. We develop an instrumental variable strategy based on predetermined availability of social housing to deal with the endogeneity in the placement which is generated by the central government's strategic behavior. Throughout the analysis, we study how all our estimated relationships of interest change after 2010, once Labour central governments are replaced by Conservative-led ones. Our findings suggest that residents of areas that are assigned more asylum seekers tend to: i) punish the party in central government, ii) move to the right of the political spectrum, iii) have a higher turnout.
"The Organizational Economics of School Chains", with L. Neri (QMUL) and O. Silva (LSE)
[Extended abstract available upon request]
Academics and policy makers are increasingly advocating school autonomy as a way to improve student achievement. At the same time, however, many countries are experiencing a counterbalancing trend: the emergence of ‘chains’ that bind schools together into institutionalized structures with varying degrees of centralization. Despite their prominence, no evidence exists on the determinants and effects of differences in the organizational set-up of school chains. Our work aims to fill this gap. We use the insights of the incomplete contracts literature to study the internal organization of school chains seen as firms. We match detailed survey information on decentralization decisions of procurement activities regarding 410 chains and 2,000 schools in England to student, school and market-level administrative records. We find that chains with a larger share of schools whose leadership background is aligned with the chain board’s expertise, younger chains, and chains that are closer to the market value-added (‘productivity’) frontier decentralize more. We find instead no association between the value-added heterogeneity of the markets in which the chains operate and their decision to delegate. Future work will investigate the link between the structure of school chains and their students’ performance.