[...]The central point is simple: far and away themost important determinant of how quickly studentslearn is the effort of students themselves. It follows thatan increase in schools’ expectations of students couldhave important effects on the quality of public schooling.By establishing a...

The paper considers theoretical and empirical evidence on the impact of standards-based school reform. Our theoretical synthesis distinguishes between sorting and incentive effects of high standards, and spells out the potential tradeoffs and complementarities between enhancing efficiency and...

This paper raises the problem of how to define revealed probabilistic beliefs in the context of the capacity/Choquet Expected Utility model. At the center of the analysis is a decision-theoretically axiomatized definition of ""revealed unambiguous events."" The definition is shown to impose...

This paper exhibits a class of infinite-horizon economies with incomplete markets (GEI) for which the equilibrium can be explicitly derived. We show that if agents have preference orderings represented by expected discounted quadratic utilities and if their endowments are tradable, then the...

We analyze the reallocations of educational expenditures required to equalize opportunities, according to the theory of Roemer (1998). Using the NLSYM data set, we find that implementing an equal-opportunity policy across men of different races, by using educational finance as the instrument,...

The paper considers theoretical and empirical evidence on the impact of standards-based school reform. Our theoretical synthesis distinguishes between sorting and incentive effects of high standards, and spells out the potential tradeoffs and complementarities between enhancing efficiency and...

We evaluate the integrating and segregating effects of school choice in a large, urban school district. Our findings, based on applications for fall 2001, suggest that open enrollment, a school-choice program that does not have explicit integrative objectives and does not provide busing,...

The author notes that raising the school-leaving age and increasing the amount of spending per pupil have been extremely important public school reforms. However, he says, sizable improvements in school quality will only be evident when these two reforms are complemented by higher standards--and...

Do smaller classes boost achievement mainly by helping teachers impart specific academic skills to students with low academic achievement? Or do they do so primarily by helping teachers engage poorly behaving students? The analysis uses the grade 3 to 4 transition in San Diego Unified School...

Despite recent theoretical work and proposals from educational reformers, there is little empirical work on the effects of higher grading standards. In this paper we use data from the High School and Beyond survey to estimate the effects of grading standards on student achievement, educational...