Smaller Schools or Longer Bus Rides? Returns to Scale and School Choice

Margaret Ledyard

No 260, 2004 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: School choice programs, such as vouchers or charter schools, offer parents an alternative to traditional public schools, while removing students from traditional public schools. If there are returns to scale in education, a major exodus of students from public schools could increase the average cost of students left behind. This paper uses a structural model to estimate the magnitudes of the scale economies, and then uses these estimates to simulate the increase in average cost in the public schools from a choice program. Depending on the assumptions made, the long run increase in average cost of a student who remains in public school is on the order of $500

Keywords: economics of education; increasing returns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I22 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
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