Working Paper: NBER ID: w18185
Authors: Silke J. Forbes; Nora E. Gordon
Abstract: We investigate decision-making and the potential for social learning among school administrators in the market for school reform consulting services. Specifically, we estimate whether public schools are more likely to choose given Comprehensive School Reform service providers if their "peer" schools--defined by common governance or geography--have performed unusually well with those providers in the past. We find strong evidence that schools tend to contract with providers used by other schools in their own districts in the past, regardless of past performance. In addition, our point estimates are consistent with school administrators using information from peers to choose the plans they perceive to have performed best in the past. Despite choosing a market with an unusually comprehensive data source on contracts between public schools and private firms, our statistical power is sufficiently weak that we cannot reject the absence of social learning.
Keywords: school reform; social learning; public education; contracting; peer influence
JEL Codes: H52; I2; L14
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| past experiences with CSR plans by peer schools (M14) | current choice of CSR plans (M14) |
| CSR plans previously utilized within own district (M14) | likelihood of choosing CSR plans (M14) |
| perceived quality of prior experiences with a plan in the same district (L15) | future choices of CSR plans (M14) |