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Notes: New Directions in the Economic Analysis of Education @ mfi uchicago

Rough notes on  Day One of “New Direc­tions in the Eco­nomic Analy­sis of Edu­ca­tion” event at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago’s Mil­ton Fried­man Insti­tute. Hope­fully I’ll get a chance to write some reflec­tions about this…

9:02:13 AM: I’m ran­domly attend­ing an eco­nom­ics of edu­ca­tion event at #mfi uchicago today. I’m under the impres­sion that it will be…

9:02:55 AM: …less about edu­ca­tion in the tra­di­tional sense and more about human cap­i­tal devel­op­ment. there’s a rea­son econ is the dis­mal sci­ence #mfi

9:06:29 AM: ten­ta­tively plan­ning on sit­ting in on a few ses­sions today. I’ll twit­ter along haphazardly…

9:07:30 AM: #mfi co-sponsor is the “Cen­ter for Human Cap­i­tal at SUNY Buffalo”

9:08:35 AM: #mfi uchicago: pro­gram for New Direc­tions in Eco­nomic Analy­sis…
http://mfi.uchicago.edu/programs/fy10_events/20091120_becker.shtml

9:14:53 AM: Ses­sion 1: Edu­ca­tion & Health –> is there a causal effect of edu­ca­tion on health? + mod­els on the rate of return of edu­ca­tion #mfi uchicago

9:15:48 AM: “school­ing” in this talk refers to “some col­lege” #mfi uchicago

9:23:26 AM: “par­tial inven­tory of the stock of health at age T… edu can pro­mote health, health + edu­ca­tion can improve many fac­tors” #mfi uchicago

9:25:08 AM: Blogged — Notes: New Direc­tions in the Eco­nomic Analy­sis of Edu­ca­tion @ mfi uchicago: Some Related Posts:

No rel… http://bit.ly/2ILcD1

9:28:39 AM: (I should really share some of the equa­tions but am lazy)

9:33:54 AM: nice bit about mea­sur­ing the impact of shifts in pol­icy, prob­a­bilis­ticly. #mfi uchicago

9:33:54 AM: nice bit about mea­sur­ing the impact of shifts in pol­icy, prob­a­bilis­ticly. #mfi uchicago

9:37:26 AM: nice attempt to iden­tify the mar­ginal lim­its (for the mar­ginal per­son). dif­fer­ent lim­its depend­ing on approach to equa­tion… #mfi uchicago

9:39:48 AM: I like how Gary Becker doesn’t wait for the ques­tion & answer part of the ses­sion! #mfi uchicago

9:42:31 AM: “how does this look in a devel­op­ing country?”

9:44:31 AM: pre­sen­ter is run­ning out of time. try­ing to cram 30+ min­utes into his last 10…

9:45:05 AM: “only talk­ing about mar­ginal returns on wages right now”

9:49:39 AM: side note: the dimin­ish­ing returns prop­erty is some­thing that I like to apply to all sorts of things. The most use­ful of eco­nom­ics ideas

9:50:15 AM: “How much time do I have left? 5 Min­utes. 5 min­utes? I haven’t even got­ten to health yet!” (the title is health and edu­ca­tion) #mfi uchicago

9:55:51 AM: “going to col­lege seems to make a dif­fer­ence when it comes to smok­ing, but not so much for being over­weight” #mfi uchicago

10:03:30 AM: ~ “no clear argu­ment for edu­ca­tion sub­si­diza­tion based on health effects” #mfi uchicago

10:04:45 AM: dis­cus­sant, start­ing with econo­met­ric con­cepts… #mfi uchicago

10:18:28 AM: the dis­cus­sant is very good… he’s tak­ing parts of the paper apart in such a pleas­ant way #mfi uchicago

10:21:06 AM: “cig­a­rettes have been called cof­fin nails since the 1940s, so it’s hard to say that peo­ple didn’t know” #mfi uchicago

10:23:59 AM: dis­cus­sant: “some­times it’s hard to find the con­clu­sions in his papers, and when you do they are in very small print”

10:25:54 AM: “new papers are argu­ing that there is no effect on health from education”

10:54:42 AM: Ses­sion 2 is “Trends in Quality-Adjusted Skill Pre­mia in the United States, 1960–2000 ” #mfi uchicago

10:57:27 AM: “is it an under­ly­ing assump­tion that the tech­nol­ogy of edu­ca­tion hasn’t changed sub­stan­tially?” #mfi uchicago

10:58:52 AM: non com­mit­tal answer to that, which means that the lon­gi­tu­di­nal nature of this might be under­cut by inno­va­tion in teach­ing / training

11:10:26 AM: ses­sion two is strug­gle. first the crowd is more apt to hijack the ses­sion, two the tech in the room is being unco­op­er­a­tive. #mfi uchicago

11:16:41 AM: crowd “all migra­tions are not equal. dif­fer­ent migra­tions mean dif­fer­ent things” #mfi uchicago

11:38:41 AM: ses­sion 2 was inter­est­ing, dis­cus­sant is up. #mfi uchicago

12:29:05 PM: was going to sit out sess 3, but now I’m tak­ing the “let’s just sit here and get some of my email done” approach. Sess 4 is the impor­tant 1

12:46:23 PM: the pre­sen­ter and dis­cus­sant from ses­sion 1 are hav­ing a spir­ited dis­cus­sion dur­ing the break. acad­e­mia at it’s best. #mfi uchicago

1:02:19 PM: Ses­sion 3 ” Human Cap­i­tal, Endoge­nous Infor­ma­tion Acqui­si­tion, and “Home Bias” in Finan­cial Mar­kets ” #mfi uchicago

1:47:22 PM: #mfi uchicago Ses­sion 3 has one chart that men­tions school­ing attain­ments. (bring on ses­sion 4, pls)

1:52:49 PM: “more edu­ca­tion increases your like­li­hood of hold­ing for­eign & domes­tic stocks” (they’ve con­trolled 4 gen­eral wealth some­how) #mfi uchicago

2:09:23 PM: acad­e­mia: the dis­cus­sants are very good, they give a much bet­ter sum­mary than the pre­sen­ters ever do.

2:12:17 PM: #mfi uchicago still in ses­sion 3, it’s tough not to look at buy­ing local assets as a con­se­quence of infor­ma­tional advantage.

2:20:18 PM: “coun­tries with low edu­ca­tion lev­els are more depen­dent on the US econ­omy” #mfi uchicago

2:21:54 PM: Ses­sion 4: “Account­abil­ity and Flex­i­bil­ity in Pub­lic Schools: New Evi­dence from Boston’s Char­ters and Pilots” #mfi uchicago

2:33:16 PM: ah, char­ter schools… what should I say? I know plenty of good peo­ple who do very good work in char­ters, but…

2:38:41 PM: “can schools alone close large achieve­ment gaps?”

2:39:42 PM: (i’d say no, schools alone can’t close large achieve­ment gaps. this group would say yes, or maybe) #mfi uchicago

2:42:14 PM: “since 1992: 75 char­ters granted in Mass, 9 have been lost” #mfi uchicago

2:45:27 PM: “boston has pilot schools which are approved by the teach­ers union and have some addi­tional flex­i­b­lity from the BPS rules” #mfi uchicago

2:48:16 PM: “boston char­ter mid­dle schools have a 12 to 1 student:teacher ratio” / geez, that’s almost an over-determining fac­tor in itself…

2:53:25 PM: “char­ters 1400 hrs/yr, 1100 hr/yr in reg­u­lar BPS” / this one is another over­whelm­ing fac­tor, but one that I’m cred­it­ing char­ters for. /#mfi

2:55:21 PM: they’re try­ing to look at the lot­ter­ies (which I’ll always con­tend are stacked in the favor of char­ters) #mfi uchicago

2:58:34 PM: who starts char­ters? ~ “com­pa­nies, indi­vid­ual edu­ca­tional entre­pre­neurs, dis­sat­is­fied teach­ers who still have ide­al­ism” #mfi uchicago

3:02:04 PM: “BPS enrolls more spe­cial ed stu­dents than char­ters or pilots, char­ters enroll many fewer lim­ited eng­lish stu­dents” #mfi uchicago

3:03:31 PM: chicago, I believe, has a more dras­tic dif­fer­ence in the num­bers of spec ed stu­dents in char­ters vs. reg­u­lar cps #mfi uchicago

3:05:37 PM: they aren’t yet address­ing the famil­ial advan­tage inher­ent in apply­ing for these lot­ter­ies. #char­ters #mfi uchicago

3:09:48 PM: as far as I’m con­cerned class size is #1 fac­tor. Give any kid sig­nif­i­cant edu­ca­tional atten­tion and you make a big difference.

3:14:56 PM: they’re look­ing at a com­par­i­son between lot­tery par­tic­i­pants, com­par­ing those that were accepted and those that weren’t. #mfi uchicago

3:17:20 PM: this almost cov­ers the effects of the > parental inter­est in edu (where char­ters usu­ally have a dis­pro­por­tion­ate advan­tage) #mfi uchicago

3:30:47 PM: “seems like the over­sub­scribed school are really the good ones, boston par­ents are try­ing to get into the good schools” #mfi uchicago

3:33:16 PM: “we’re all bayesians” #mfi uchicago

3:36:11 PM: dis­cus­sant “if we were able to pay 10K more per student/year in char­ters, the rate of return would be out­stand­ing” #mfi uchicago

3:43:13 PM: dis­cus­sant bring­ing up chicago mag­nets and fact that the with-it par­ents get their kids into best mag­net hs first (char­ters as fall back)

3:51:54 PM: “HCZ data is sim­i­lar to boston data, but smaller scale and more com­pli­cat­ing fac­tors” #mfi uchicago

3:58:09 PM: only at the end did they talk about self-selection effects of par­ents who are “with it” enough to get their kids into a school lot­tery. #mfi

3:59:42 PM: the “with it” par­ents are an unap­pre­ci­ated part of this story. slight gains are going to be can­celed out when that advan­tage goes #mfi

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