When Schools Compete, How Do They Compete? An Assessment of Chile's Nationwide School Voucher Program

Chang-Tai Hsieh and Miguel Urquiola

No 10008, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In 1981, Chile introduced nationwide school choice by providing vouchers to any student wishing to attend private school. As a result, more than 1,000 private schools entered the market, and the private enrollment rate increased by 20 percentage points, with greater impacts in larger, more urban, and wealthier communities. We use this differential impact to measure the effects of unrestricted choice on educational outcomes. Using panel data for about 150 municipalities, we find no evidence that choice improved average educational outcomes as measured by test scores, repetition rates, and years of schooling. However, we find evidence that the voucher program led to increased sorting, as the best' public school students left for the private sector.

JEL-codes: I2 L3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
Note: ED LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (80)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10008.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: When Schools Compete, How Do They Compete? An Assessment of Chile's Nationwide School Voucher Program (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10008

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().