Labor Economics & PAM Workshop: John Singleton

John Singleton - University of Rochester 
 

Valuing School Choice: Using a Randomized Experiment to Validate Welfare Evaluation of Private School Vouchers*

(Peter Arcidiacono, Karthik Muralidharan, Eun-young Shim, John D. Singleton)

Abstract: While parents and students value schools for many reasons, evaluation of school choice programs typically focuses on impacts on student outcomes alone. In this paper, we pursue a unique research design to estimate the welfare impacts of offering vouchers to attend private schools. Using control group data drawn from a randomized controlled trial of private school vouchers in rural India, we first develop and estimate an empirical model of school choice subject to ability-to-pay. We then externally validate the estimated welfare impacts by comparing model predictions for a simulated voucher program with the treatment group outcomes. In this draft, we present results from the first step of the research design and report predictions of voucher take-up for the experimental validation.