When one door closes: the impact of the hagwon curfew on the consumption of private tutoring in the Republic of Korea

Hoon Choi () and Alvaro Choi ()
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Alvaro Choi: IEB, Universitat de Barcelona

No XREAP2015-06, Working Papers from Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP)

Abstract: The Korean government has struggled against the proliferation of private tutoring for more than four decades. In 2006, state education authorities imposed a restriction on operating hours of hagwon (private tutoring academies or cram schools) in an attempt at reducing the economic and time resources spent on private tutoring. Since then, some provincial authorities have modified the curfew on hagwon. We take advantage of these policy shifts to identify average treatment effects taking a difference-in-differences approach. Our findings suggest that enforcing the curfew did not generate a significant reduction in the hours and resources spent on private tutoring, our results being heterogeneous by school level and socioeconomic status. Demand for private tutoring seems to be especially inelastic for high school students, who increased their consumption of alternative forms of private tutoring. As the consumption of private tutoring is positively correlated with academic performance and socioeconomic status, the curfew may have a negative effect on the equality of educational opportunities.

Keywords: Private tutoring; Demand for schooling; Expenditures; Difference in differences; Korea (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I22 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2015-11, Revised 2015-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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http://www.xreap.cat/RePEc/xrp/pdf/XREAP2015-06.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)
http://www.xreap.cat/RePEc/xrp/pdf/XREAP2015-06.pdf Revised version, 2016 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: When one door closes: the impact of the hagwon curfew on the consumption of private tutoring in the Republic of Korea (2015)
Working Paper: When one door closes: the impact of the hagwon curfew on the consumption of private tutoring in the Republic of Korea (2015)
Working Paper: When one door closes: the impact of the hagwon curfew on the consumption of private tutoring in the Republic of Korea (2015)
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