Dynamic Effort Choice in High School: Costs and Benefits of an Academic Track

Olivier De Groote

No 19-1002, TSE Working Papers from Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)

Abstract: I investigate high school tracking policies using a dynamic discrete choice model of study programs and unobserved effort. I estimate the model using data from Flanders (Belgium) and perform an ex-ante evaluation of a policy that encourages underperforming students to switch to less academically ori-ented programs. This reduces grade retention by a third and dropout by 11%. Although it decreases college enrollment, the decrease in college graduation is small and insignificant. I also show that modeling effort is important, otherwise we would predict smaller decreases in grade retention and dropout and larger decreases in college enrollment and graduation.

Keywords: high school curriculum; early tracking; dynamic discrete choice; CCP estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 I26 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-03-29, Revised 2023-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tse:wpaper:122897

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