A bounds analysis of school completion rates in Australia

Tue Gørgens and Chris Ryan
Additional contact information
Tue Gørgens: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia, Postal: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Chris Ryan: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia, Postal: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2008, vol. 23, issue 3, pages 287-304

Abstract: Official estimates of school completion rates in Australia increased in the 1980s, peaked in 1992, and fell immediately thereafter before stabilizing. The official estimates were a specific focus of Australian education policy. The decline caused concern at the time. We use data from the Australian Youth Survey (AYS) to gain insight into the behavior of the official estimates. The AYS suffers from nonrepresentativeness, attrition and nonresponse, which means that parameters of interest are not identified. Our bounds analysis is suggestive that school completion was overstated in the official estimates at their peak. Our analysis points to repetition as a key factor in inflating the official estimates. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/jae.975 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)
http://qed.econ.queensu.ca:80/jae/2008-v23.3/ Supporting data files and programs (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www3.intersci ... e.jsp?issn=0883-7252

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Applied Econometrics is edited by M. Hashem Pesaran

More articles in Journal of Applied Econometrics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().