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Valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities

Stephen Gibbons, Stephen Machin and Olmo Silva (o.silva@lse.ac.uk)

Journal of Urban Economics, 2013, vol. 75, issue C, 15-28

Abstract: Existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. However, higher test scores could signal higher academic value-added or higher ability, more sought-after intakes. In our research, we show that both school value-added and student prior achievement – linked to the background of children in schools – affect households’ demand for education. In order to identify these effects, we improve the boundary discontinuity regression methodology by matching identical properties across admissions authority boundaries; by allowing for boundary effects and spatial trends; by re-weighting our data towards transactions that are closest to district boundaries; by eliminating boundaries that coincide with major geographical features; and by submitting our estimates to a number of novel falsification tests. Our results survive this battery of tests and show that a one-standard deviation change in either school average value-added or prior achievement raises prices by around 3%.

Keywords: House prices; School quality; Boundary discontinuities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 H75 I20 R21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (137)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Valuing School Quality Using Boundary Discontinuities (2012) Downloads
Working Paper: Valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities (2012) Downloads
Working Paper: Valuing School Quality Using Boundary Discontinuities (2009) Downloads
Working Paper: Valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities (2009) Downloads
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:juecon:v:75:y:2013:i:c:p:15-28

DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2012.11.001

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