As an underachiever from the Scarsdale Class of 1984, this new Stanford research by a professor named Minter-Hoxby caught my eye. Charter Schools appear to have a serious Treatment Effect. But, why do they? In thinking about the development of "human capability", the key unobservable is what goes on in the household. When parents see that their kid is in a better learning environment do they turn off the television and read more more and work more with their kids? Are home investments in the kid's human capital a substitute or complement of what goes in school? So, the "Kahn Conjecture" is that we need to take care that we have identified what actually is the "treatment". Parents will re-optimize once they see their child is making progress. I would like to see time diaries on what goes on at charter school households at night and at weekends and the counter-factual would parents have been reading to their kids and working less with them had they remained in public schools?


Looking back to Scarsdale, a big chunk of the "treatment" was the culture of excellence. I felt bad about not paying attention to my teachers and winging my homework. Now, I realize that I was front loading leisure . Only starting at age 22 when I went to Graduate School from October 1988 on have I have worked hard. From February 1966 until October 1988, I was in low gear and not too bugged about it.

Caroline is certainly correct that A lottery discontinuity does get you the right control group but the treatment group may be receiving multiple treatments including better parental inputs because they are in the treatment group. Should this second effect be counted as part of the treatment?


Suppose I am right about my parental "complements" story, does this chip away at Caroline's claims? I don't think so but it hints at necessary versus sufficient conditions for child excellence.

I would like to ask Caroline how Roland Fryer's "incentive experiments" and Heckman's work on dynamic complementarities (learning begets learning) fits into her claims. In the second case, should this predict heterogeneous treatment effects of participating in charter schools. Is she claiming that there is a uniform treatment effect here?



Prof. shows charter school efficacy

By: Marisa Landicho

Supporters of charter schools – schools that are privately managed but supported by public funds – have gained scientific credibility from a report released by Stanford economics Prof. Caroline Hoxby.

The report analyzed the New York State Exam results for over 41,000 charter and public school students, ranging from grades three through 12, in the New York City school system.

“On average,” the study concluded, “a student who attended a charter school for all of grades kindergarten to eight would close about 86 percent of the achievement gap in math and 66 percent of the ‘Scarsdale-Harlem’ achievement gap in English.”

Hoxby’s research, however, goes beyond just measuring test results of disadvantaged Harlem students against those of higher-performing, suburban Scarsdale students.

While previous studies have shown a similar increase in test scores, critics have argued that charter schools secure these higher scores by selecting only the students most likely to succeed. Professor Hoxby’s work has gained national attention for finding a method to overcome this objection, with mentions in the Washington Post and The New York Times.

Instead of comparing charter school students with the entire public school population, Hoxby only examined those students who had applied to the charter system and were either accepted (‘lotteried in’) or denied (‘lotteried out’) based on a lottery system.

“If the charter schools are doing better, then it can’t be because they are choosing better students,” she said. “That’s why we like to do these studies – it clarifies what we’re talking about and removes one of the potential problems.”

‘Lotteried in’ and ‘lotteried out’ students in the study are statistically equivalent in the categories of race, ethnicity, gender, prior test scores, percentage on free and reduced lunch and English Learner status.

“The parents go through the same application process, they are just as likely to send their kids to charter schools, and the only difference is a random lottery number,” Hoxby said.

With controls in place, the ‘lotteried in’ students ended up scoring higher than the ‘lotteried out’ group, testing an average of three points higher on Regents Exams for every year spent in the charter system.

Further study is needed to identify what aspects of charter schools contribute to better achievement, Hoxby said.

“I think that one of the big things to do is to follow these students when they get out of high school and go on to college,” she said. “We’d be disappointed if they did better in eighth grade then find they no longer improve.”

But Hoxby stressed that the results are not a mandate for charter schools.

“It’s about learning what makes schools work,” she said. “The point is to say, ‘O.K., look, here are a set of schools that are successful with disadvantaged students, what can we learn about these schools, and can we apply these lessons to public schools.’”

Tags: Caroline Hoxby, education

http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=1033147

Will Larry Summers comment on the mutual benefits of this globalization? Here is direct evidence of the pollution haven effect at work. As Europe ratches up its pollution regulation, waste is now being exported to poorer nations. Unlike in the case of international trade in manufacturing, there is no offsetting factor endowment effect. While the New York Times does a good job of documenting the fact, they implicitly are saying that this trade "is bad". From an environmental standpoint, I understand their claim if they are saying that "in the absence of trade, Europe would have figured out ways and passed laws to reduce the amount of garbage produced because they would have anticipated that they would be stuck with any waste that would be generated because they would know that they couldn't "outsource it"".

But, a Larry Summers might say; "once the waste is created, doesn't the Coasian logic ask us to consider whether there are mutually beneficial gains to trade between the poor and rich countries?".

Don't forget about the Summers Memo . It does raise some interesting debate points.


This article promoting Denmark as a nation of "Consumer Cities" catering to tourists is also worth reading.

There are no direct flights from Los Angeles to Lexington, Kentucky. Next thursday, I will have the pleasure of flying through Houston as I try to get to Lexington. I will be participating in this conference on friday 10/2.

I am greatly looking forward to this event. Some excellent economists will be there and I'm eager to see some old friends of mine.

To quote the organizers;

"UKCPR will host Appalachia and the Legacy of the War on Poverty: A Research Agenda on Oct. 2, 8-4:15 p.m. in the Young Library Auditorium, UK campus. This conference will help UKCPR establish a research agenda to invesitgate policy solutions for persistent poverty in the region."

My paper discusses the challenges and opportunities for cities located within Appalachia. In a nutshell, I will argue that the last 30 years of urban economics has taught us that the key to urban growth is attracting and retaining the skilled.

I document that few skilled people move from outside of Appalachia to Appalachia's cities. So, the key for Appalachia is to retain their own skilled and to "grow more".

I argue that small, "green" consumer cities are the path to achieving this goal and point out an irony that the rise of carbon pricing and thus the acceleration of the decline in coal mining (dirty) activity will accelerate this trend. As usual, I will argue that there is a "green silver lining" to exiting the dirty sector, even though there are short run transition costs.

Please read my new paper.

Do we have good estimates of the costs of the flu? This article highlights the costs that Stanford Seniors have suffered. Would a hyperbolic model have predicted a riot against the Administration's rules? Will the Stanford class of 2010 donate less $ to the school because they were denied their kiss under the full moon? A good labor economist should study how this kissing market "clicks". When it isn't flu season, there must be a good field experiment that could be tried in this setting?

I taught at stanford from 2003-2004 and nobody invited me to this event.

To reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, we need per-capita emissions to decline faster than population grows. Given continued world per-capita income growth, how can we reduce per-capita carbon emissions?

My strong Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger argues here that children should not take long hot showers. His thoughts are interesting on a number of levels. His push for "minimalist consumption" would stand out in Brentwood. The article highlights that he has 4 children. If each of them takes a 5 minute hot shower, perhaps I should encourage my 1 child to take a 20 minute hot shower? Don't we have an equal right to scarce resources?

An alternative strategy for shrinking the carbon footprint is to make energy intensive technologies less fun to use. Read this . Consider taking the elevator versus the stairs. This article says that if elevators were slower and smaller that more people would take the stairs, Gary Becker made this point in 1965. Time is money.

I realize that we will embrace many different strategies to reduce our carbon production.

But at the end of the day, we do need the nudge of the carbon tax. Will the Senate agree?

Your loyal embedded reporter risked injury to take this exciting picture of an active protest at UCLA:



In contrast, Beijing's leading universities are focused on research and teaching rather than protest. Here was the scariest sight I could see at the Peking University Business School.



I suggested that this was a monument in Bill Clinton's honor and my hosts agreed.

Returning to the UCLA protests, what is the issue here? My University has a serious budget deficit. Do we balance such a budget by raising revenue (i.e Tuition and the % of out of state students)? Or by cutting expenditure? (i.e no more hiring and faculty and staff pay cuts)

Who bears the incidence of bad news? Of course, I think that the students should. Ignoring liquidity constraints, attending UCLA is still a wise long term investment even if we charged $65,000 per year per student.

Murphy Hall is not this brave. Given UCLA's prominent name, from now on we should take 50% of our students from out of state and the extra tuition we could collect would cover the University's costs. There wouldn't have to be these draconian pay cuts that threaten to lead to a massive Brain Drain starting this year. Has anyone asked the UCLA Law School Dean whether his paycut was a "push" in encouraging him to leave?

This is an interesting article about how land is being re-allocated in major U.S cities. Even I notice the urban heat island effect created by pavement. Can we share public space? In cities with less income inequality and more ethnic homogeneity, there must be a greater demand for sharing public parks (a public good) rather than self segregating into separate spheres of the city (private clubs and country clubs).

During my time in Beijing, I had the opportunity to learn about land allocation in China. Many local politicians collect a large % of their revenue from leasing land to developers. This creates some distinctive incentives. On the one hand, a revenue maximizing Mayor has an incentive to have no parks and to turn all "green space" into land that will be leased to developers who will build a 50 story apartment building. On the other hand, such activity can chip away at the city's quality of life and this will be negatively capitalized. So, do China's cities have the right incentives to preserve "green space"?


Switching subjects, Mike Jura and I are co-teaching this energy course this fall.

The New York Times should consider allowing its readers to do the writing on climate issues. These comments are worth reading.

UCLA's faculty have not been that happy about our unexpected paycut. My wife and I have suffered a combined paycut larger that the Chancellor's (but smaller than the basketball coach). But, the UCLA Deans have informed us that we can use our furlough days to generate some more money for our families. Below, I report on a unique opportunity that LA offers. You can't spell "UCLA" without "LA"!



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Hayley Scheck

B|W|R Public Relations

(310) 550-7776 / hscheck@bwr-la.com



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NOW, shouldn't a cost minimizing economist well trained in the stochastic calculus and quick with numbers excel at this?

I can barely remember my Hamilton College days. Somehow the mid-1980s are a blur. Perhaps graduate school erased my hard disk. But, this letter that I quote from below makes me proud. The President of Hamilton College is not a Ph.D. economist but she sounds "as if" she is one in this hard headed letter. I see a forward looking thinker who anticipates technological advance and a long payback period for the current generation of green products (especially if carbon pricing is not enacted). Please see my additional comment after her quote.

She must be taking some heat for not "going green" today but her choices will make Hamilton College more "sustainable" in the long run. She is a "Profile in Courage".


"As I look around our beautiful campus, even more beautiful in my eyes after a few months’ absence, I feel strongly the responsibility to sustain this place and the experience it provides. And so I ask myself again, as I often have in the past, “What does it take to be a sustainable campus, a sustainable college?” The answer is, frankly, especially complex in stringent times, and entails intersecting matters of education, finances, construction, people and choices – endless choices.

Let me evoke one such recent choice. The summer months were, as usual, busy with renovation, repair and construction projects, for a campus the size and expanse of Hamilton – 113 buildings spread over 1350 acres – requires a continuous round of maintenance. One of the first discussions in which I participated centered on the renovation of Emerson Hall (originally built in 1928 and known as ELS) into a student center. This is a project many of us have long wanted to bring to fruition, for it responds to needs for meeting, office and activity space that have been consistently expressed by students over the years. It will house our wonderful campus activities staff and provide a central place for the work of the numerous student organizations that form so essential a part of the Hamilton College experience. But the specific subject of the conversation that I was called on to moderate was solar panels. Should we or should we not put them on the roof of the renovated building? On the one hand, it was argued that they would be a visible sign of our commitment to being “green,” mirroring not only the solar panels recently installed on the renovated Kirner-Johnson Building but also the windmill on the Kirkland side of campus (a gift from the Class of 1991), and resonating with other initiatives of the last few years such as geothermal heating systems, Zipcars, a community garden, our food service’s farm-to-fork program, and even the use of commencement regalia made of recyclable materials. On the other hand, the energy generated by such panels would be small and the payback long – perhaps 40 to 50 years, during which time the technology will evolve – and there are countless competing needs to which we must attend. Do the actual contributions to preserving the planet and the symbolic contributions to Hamilton’s image outweigh the decades-long timeframe necessary to recoup the expense?"

A quote from Hamilton College's President Joan Stewart

FOLLOWUP: Two commenters made some good points but I'd like to add a new point. The President of Hamilton holds an option here. If President Obama signs a Cap and Trade Carbon Bill (and I hope he does), then the payback period on this solar panel investment will shrink. Stewart has not said "no" she has said "not yet". She has the option of exercising this option in the future when better, cheaper solar panels are available and when electricity prices are higher due to explicit carbon pricing (which will drive up the price of power generated by coal and other fossil fuels).