IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp5528.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Scale Economies Can Offset the Benefits of Competition: Evidence from a School Consolidation Reform in a Universal Voucher System

Author

Listed:
  • de Haan, Monique

    (University of Oslo)

  • Leuven, Edwin

    (University of Oslo)

  • Oosterbeek, Hessel

    (University of Amsterdam)

Abstract

A large school consolidation reform in the Netherlands changed minimum school size rules underlying public funding. The supply of schools decreased by 15 percent, but this varied considerably across municipalities. We find that reducing the number of schools by 10 percent increases pupils' achievement by 3 percent of a standard deviation. A reduction in the supply of schools implies, for a given number of pupils, an increase in average school size. We present evidence that in our context scale economies dominated the effects of choice and competition. This points to an often ignored trade-off between scale and competition.

Suggested Citation

  • de Haan, Monique & Leuven, Edwin & Oosterbeek, Hessel, 2011. "Scale Economies Can Offset the Benefits of Competition: Evidence from a School Consolidation Reform in a Universal Voucher System," IZA Discussion Papers 5528, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5528
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp5528.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Card & Martin D. Dooley & A. Abigail Payne, 2010. "School Competition and Efficiency with Publicly Funded Catholic Schools," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 150-176, October.
    2. Hanushek, Eric A. & Kain, John F. & Rivkin, Steven G. & Branch, Gregory F., 2007. "Charter school quality and parental decision making with school choice," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(5-6), pages 823-848, June.
    3. Böhlmark, Anders & Lindahl, Mikael, 2008. "Does School Privatization Improve Educational Achievement? Evidence from Sweden's Voucher Reform," IZA Discussion Papers 3691, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Scott A. Imberman, 2011. "Achievement and Behavior in Charter Schools: Drawing a More Complete Picture," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(2), pages 416-435, May.
    5. Kuziemko, Ilyana, 2006. "Using shocks to school enrollment to estimate the effect of school size on student achievement," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 63-75, February.
    6. Joshua Angrist & Eric Bettinger & Erik Bloom & Elizabeth King & Michael Kremer, 2002. "Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1535-1558, December.
    7. Robert Bifulco & Helen F. Ladd, 2006. "The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 1(1), pages 50-90, January.
    8. Brasington, David M., 1999. "Joint provision of public goods: the consolidation of school districts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 373-393, September.
    9. Helen F. Ladd, 2002. "School Vouchers: A Critical View," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 3-24, Fall.
    10. Stephen Gibbons & Stephen Machin & Olmo Silva, 2008. "Choice, Competition, and Pupil Achievement," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(4), pages 912-947, June.
    11. Victor Lavy, 2010. "Effects of Free Choice Among Public Schools," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(3), pages 1164-1191.
    12. Caroline M. Hoxby, 2000. "Does Competition among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1209-1238, December.
    13. Julie Berry Cullen & Brian A Jacob & Steven Levitt, 2006. "The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(5), pages 1191-1230, September.
    14. Bettinger, Eric P., 2005. "The effect of charter schools on charter students and public schools," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 133-147, April.
    15. Paul Peterson & William Howell & Patrick J. Wolf & David Campbell, 2003. "School Vouchers. Results from Randomized Experiments," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of School Choice, pages 107-144, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Miguel Urquiola, 2005. "Does School Choice Lead to Sorting? Evidence from Tiebout Variation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1310-1326, September.
    17. Joshua Angrist & Eric Bettinger & Michael Kremer, 2006. "Long-Term Educational Consequences of Secondary School Vouchers: Evidence from Administrative Records in Colombia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 847-862, June.
    18. repec:bla:econom:v:70:y:2003:i:280:p:673-690 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Cecilia Elena Rouse, 1998. "Private School Vouchers and Student Achievement: An Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 553-602.
    20. Andrews, Matthew & Duncombe, William & Yinger, John, 2002. "Revisiting economies of size in American education: are we any closer to a consensus?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 245-262, June.
    21. Derek Neal, 2002. "How Vouchers Could Change the Market for Education," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 25-44, Fall.
    22. Hsieh, Chang-Tai & Urquiola, Miguel, 2006. "The effects of generalized school choice on achievement and stratification: Evidence from Chile's voucher program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(8-9), pages 1477-1503, September.
    23. Caroline M. Hoxby, 2007. "Does Competition Among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers? Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 2038-2055, December.
    24. Jesse Rothstein, 2007. "Does Competition Among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers? Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 2026-2037, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Burgess, Simon, 2016. "Human Capital and Education: The State of the Art in the Economics of Education," IZA Discussion Papers 9885, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Chris Jacobs-Crisioni & Ana I. Moreno-Monroy & Mert Kompil & Lewis Dijkstra, 2024. "Estimating school provision, access and costs from local pupil counts under decentralised governance," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 7-46, January.
    3. De Witte, K. & Van Klaveren, C., 2012. "The effect of primary school closures on educational attainments of students," Working Papers 42, Top Institute for Evidence Based Education Research.

    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. Martin Schlotter & Guido Schwerdt & Ludger Woessmann, 2011. "Econometric methods for causal evaluation of education policies and practices: a non-technical guide," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 109-137.
    2. Atila Abdulkadiroğlu & Joshua D. Angrist & Susan M. Dynarski & Thomas J. Kane & Parag A. Pathak, 2011. "Accountability and Flexibility in Public Schools: Evidence from Boston's Charters And Pilots," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(2), pages 699-748.
    3. Böhlmark, Anders & Lindahl, Mikael, 2007. "The Impact of School Choice on Pupil Achievement, Segregation and Costs: Swedish Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 2786, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Bernardo Lara & Alejandra Mizala & Andrea Repetto, 2009. "The Effectiveness of Private Voucher Education: Evidence from Structural School Switches," Documentos de Trabajo 263, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    5. Elbert Dijkgraaf & Raymond Gradus & J. Jong, 2013. "Competition and educational quality: evidence from the Netherlands," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 40(4), pages 607-634, November.
    6. Song, Yang, 2019. "Sorting, school performance and quality: Evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 238-261.
    7. Friesen, Jane & Harris, Benjamin Cerf & Woodcock, Simon, 2013. "Open Enrolment and Student Achievement," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2013-46, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 22 Mar 2014.
    8. Dennis Epple & Richard E. Romano & Miguel Urquiola, 2017. "School Vouchers: A Survey of the Economics Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(2), pages 441-492, June.
    9. Lai, Fang & Sadoulet, Elisabeth & de Janvry, Alain, 2009. "The adverse effects of parents' school selection errors on academic achievement: Evidence from the Beijing open enrollment program," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 485-496, August.
    10. Jackson, C. Kirabo, 2012. "School competition and teacher labor markets: Evidence from charter school entry in North Carolina," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(5), pages 431-448.
    11. Figlio, D. & Karbownik, K. & Salvanes, K.G., 2016. "Education Research and Administrative Data," Handbook of the Economics of Education,, Elsevier.
    12. Felipe Barrera-Osorio & Darío Maldonado & Catherine Rodríguez, 2012. "Calidad de la Educación Básica y Media en Colombia: Diagnóstico y Propuestas," Documentos CEDE 10321, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    13. Luis Miguel Doncel & Jorge Sainz & Ismael Sanz, 2012. "An Estimation of the Advantage of Charter over Public Schools," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(4), pages 442-463, November.
    14. W. Bentley MacLeod & Miguel Urquiola, 2018. "Is Education Consumption or Investment? Implications for the Effect of School Competition," NBER Working Papers 25117, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Nicolas Grau & Daniel Hojman & Alejandra Mizala, 2015. "Destructive Creation: School Turnover and Educational Attainment," Documentos de Trabajo 312, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    16. Léonard Moulin, 2023. "Do private schools increase academic achievement? Evidence from France," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(2), pages 247-274, March.
    17. Cohn, Ricardo Meilman, 2020. "Effects of public-school choice on private schools: Evidence from open enrollment reform," CLEF Working Paper Series 23, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    18. Will Dobbie & Roland G. Fryer Jr., 2013. "Getting beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 28-60, October.
    19. Masi, Barbara, 2018. "A ticket to ride: The unintended consequences of school transport subsidies," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 100-115.
    20. Jackson, C. Kirabo, 2013. "Can higher-achieving peers explain the benefits to attending selective schools? Evidence from Trinidad and Tobago," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 63-77.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economies of scale; achievement; school consolidation; competition; school choice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:iza:izadps:dp5528. 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    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.