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Essays on Economics of Education and Social Policy
Abramishvili, Zurab ; Gaule, Patrick (advisor) ; Rivkin, Steven (referee) ; Patrinos, Harry Anthony (referee)
In the first chapter of the dissertation, two administrative datasets from the Targeted Social Assistance Program (unconditional cash transfer) and National Assessment and Examination Center in Georgia are merged in order to investigate the impact of an unconditional cash transfer on the university enrollment rate in Georgia. Given that the program recipients were selected by virtue of being below a certain quantitative poverty threshold, this feature of the program is exploited to implement a global regression discontinuity. The study finds a positive impact of cash transfers on enrollment in tertiary education. Specifically, being a recipient of the social assistance program significantly increases a student's likelihood of enrollment, by 6.3%. More importantly, the findings suggest that the observed effect is gender specific: the impact is stronger for males. Male children of a beneficiary family have a 13.4% greater chance of being admitted to university. This marks the first attempt to study such a program in the context of education. The paper contributes to the growing literature on the long-run effects of cash transfers. In the second chapter, the impact on a broad range of outcomes of the same social assistance program in Georgia is examined. An original household survey was developed and...
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Essays on Economics of Education and Social Policy
Abramishvili, Zurab ; Gaule, Patrick (advisor) ; Rivkin, Steven (referee) ; Patrinos, Harry Anthony (referee)
In the first chapter of the dissertation, two administrative datasets from the Targeted Social Assistance Program (unconditional cash transfer) and National Assessment and Examination Center in Georgia are merged in order to investigate the impact of an unconditional cash transfer on the university enrollment rate in Georgia. Given that the program recipients were selected by virtue of being below a certain quantitative poverty threshold, this feature of the program is exploited to implement a global regression discontinuity. The study finds a positive impact of cash transfers on enrollment in tertiary education. Specifically, being a recipient of the social assistance program significantly increases a student's likelihood of enrollment, by 6.3%. More importantly, the findings suggest that the observed effect is gender specific: the impact is stronger for males. Male children of a beneficiary family have a 13.4% greater chance of being admitted to university. This marks the first attempt to study such a program in the context of education. The paper contributes to the growing literature on the long-run effects of cash transfers. In the second chapter, the impact on a broad range of outcomes of the same social assistance program in Georgia is examined. An original household survey was developed and...
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Essays on Early Tracking School System
Federičová, Miroslava ; Münich, Daniel (advisor) ; Rivkin, Steven (referee) ; Falch, Torberg (referee)
Essays on the Effects of Early School Tracking Miroslava Federičová Dissertation Abstract This dissertation studies the transition process of the early-tracking school system that usually occurs at the age of 10, and focuses on its effects on student academic achievement. Moreover, as this early selection occurs at the time of changes in brain development that is different for boys and girls, all chapters also examine the topics from the perspective of gender. Chapter 1 is focused on the selection process itself and studies the role of grades in explaining the gender difference in application rates to selective schools. This selection is provided mostly according to cognitive skills that are signalled to pupils in the form of grades. Although grades play a very important role in the application process, conditional on cognitive skills, grades differ substantially between girls and boys. In this chapter, I propose the model of asymmetric signal of the probability of admission for girls and boys arising from grades. Data about transition from primary to selective schools in the Czech Republic shows that girls apply at significantly higher rates. I find that this difference also remains the same after controlling for probability of admission. Furthermore, test scores collected by an international testing...
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