Selection Into Public Service: Evidence from School Board Elections

Stephen B. Billings, Hugh Macartney, Geunyong Park and John Singleton

No 29791, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In this paper, we show that the election of a new school board member causes home values in their neighborhood to rise. This effect is identified using narrowly-decided contests and is driven by members with non-Democratic political affiliations. We do not find corresponding evidence for improvements in local school productivity, but show that neighborhood public schools of non-Democratic board members also shift to serving fewer minority students through attendance zone adjustments. In contrast, we detect no differential changes when comparing neighborhood or scholastic outcomes between winning and losing Democratic school board candidates.

JEL-codes: D72 H75 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-pol and nep-ure
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