IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/14374.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Leave them Kids Alone! National Exams as a Political Tool

Author

Listed:
  • Tavares, José
  • Mesquita Gabriel, José
  • Pereira Dos Santos, Joao

Abstract

This study examines whether standardized 12th grade national examination results are sensitive to coming legislative elections in Portugal. Using individual data for all exiting high school students taking national exams between the years 2004 and 2018, our empirical investigation uncovers a 1.17 and 0.63 increase, on a scale of 0 to 20, in Mathematics and Portuguese scores, respectively, in the years where the exams occurred before legislative elections. The quality of students and the leniency of grading do not explain this rise in pre-election exam grades, suggesting the difficulty of the exam in itself is at stake. Further, we show that a unit increase in the average score of Mathematics and Portuguese exams, in those years, leads to a 1.46 percentage point rise in the vote share of the seating government.

Suggested Citation

  • Tavares, José & Mesquita Gabriel, José & Pereira Dos Santos, Joao, 2020. "Leave them Kids Alone! National Exams as a Political Tool," CEPR Discussion Papers 14374, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14374
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP14374
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Castro, Vítor & Martins, Rodrigo, 2018. "Politically driven cycles in fiscal policy: In depth analysis of the functional components of government expenditures," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 44-64.
    2. Akhmed Akhmedov & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2004. "Opportunistic Political Cycles: Test in a Young Democracy Setting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(4), pages 1301-1338.
    3. Shi, Min & Svensson, Jakob, 2006. "Political budget cycles: Do they differ across countries and why?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(8-9), pages 1367-1389, September.
    4. V�tor Castro & Rodrigo Martins, 2016. "Are there political cycles hidden inside government expenditures?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 34-37, January.
    5. Toke Aidt & Francisco Veiga & Linda Veiga, 2011. "Election results and opportunistic policies: A new test of the rational political business cycle model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 21-44, July.
    6. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    7. Sergio Firpo & Renan Pieri & André Portela Souza, 2017. "Electoral impacts of uncovering public school quality: Evidence from Brazilian municipalities," Economia, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics], vol. 17(1), pages 1-17.
    8. Alberto Alesina & Nouriel Roubini & Gerald D. Cohen, 1997. "Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262510944, April.
    9. Hubert Strauss & Christine de la Maisonneuve, 2009. "The wage premium on tertiary education: New estimates for 21 OECD countries," OECD Journal: Economic Studies, OECD Publishing, vol. 2009(1), pages 1-29.
    10. Catarina Angelo & Ana Balcão Reis, 2021. "Gender gaps in different grading systems," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 105-119, January.
    11. Luca Repetto, 2018. "Political Budget Cycles with Informed Voters: Evidence from Italy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(616), pages 3320-3353, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. João Pereira dos Santos & José Tavares & José Mesquita, 2021. "Leave them kids alone! National exams as a political tool," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 189(3), pages 405-426, December.
    2. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01291401, HAL.
    3. George Petrakos & Konstantinos Rontos & Luca Salvati & Chara Vavoura & Ioannis Vavouras, 2022. "Toward a political budget cycle? Unveiling long-term latent paths in Greece," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 3379-3394, October.
    4. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political business cycles 40 years after Nordhaus," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 235-259, January.
    5. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Post-Print hal-01291401, HAL.
    6. Aidt, Toke S. & Mooney, Graham, 2014. "Voting suffrage and the political budget cycle: Evidence from the London Metropolitan Boroughs 1902–1937," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 53-71.
    7. Linda G. Veiga & Georgios Efthyvoulou & Atsuyoshi Morozumi, 2018. "Political Budget Cycles: Conditioning Factors and New Evidence," NIPE Working Papers 21/2018, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    8. Foremny, Dirk & Freier, Ronny & Moessinger, Marc-Daniel & Yeter, Mustafa, 2014. "Overlapping political budget cycles in the legislative and the executive," ZEW Discussion Papers 14-099, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    9. Castro, Vítor & Martins, Rodrigo, 2018. "Politically driven cycles in fiscal policy: In depth analysis of the functional components of government expenditures," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 44-64.
    10. Manuela Krause, 2019. "Communal fees and election cycles: Evidence from German municipalities," ifo Working Paper Series 293, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    11. Fuest, Clemens & Gründler, Klaus & Potrafke, Niklas & Ruthardt, Fabian, 2024. "Read my lips? Taxes and elections," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    12. Toke Aidt & Zareh Asatryan & Lusine Badalyan & Friedrich Heinemann, 2020. "Vote Buying or (Political) Business (Cycles) as Usual?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(3), pages 409-425, July.
    13. García, Israel & Hayo, Bernd, 2021. "Political budget cycles revisited: Testing the signalling process," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    14. Chiu, Eric M.P., 2020. "Reexamining the Macroeconomic Policy Cycle in Taiwan: Evidence from the Central Bank’s Monetary Reaction Function," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 61(2), pages 89-110, December.
    15. Francesco Capalbo & Claudio Lupi & Margherita Smarra & Marco Sorrentino, 2021. "Elections and earnings management: evidence from municipally-owned entities," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 25(3), pages 707-730, September.
    16. Jan Kluge & Gunther Markwardt & Christian Thater, 2015. "Self-preserving Leviathans - Evidence from Regional-level Data," CESifo Working Paper Series 5177, CESifo.
    17. Margarita Katsimi & Vassilis Sarantides, 2015. "Public investment and reelection prospects in developed countries," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(2), pages 471-500, October.
    18. Federico Revelli & Roberto Zotti, 2019. "The sacred and the profane of budget cycles: evidence from Italian municipalities," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 26(6), pages 1446-1477, December.
    19. Endrit Lami & Drini Imami, 2019. "Electoral Cycles of Tax Performance in Advanced Democracies," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 65(3), pages 275-295.
    20. Toke Aidt & Graham Mooney, 2014. "Voter suffrage and the political budget cycle: evidence from the London Metropolitan Boroughs 1902-1937," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1401, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14374. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.