Danny Cohen-Zada

The political economy of school choice: linking theory and evidence

Abstract We derive an improved methodology for linking theoretical parameters of a political economy model of school choice to empirical values estimated by regressing local private enrollment shares on mean income, the median-to-mean ratio, religious and ethnic composition, and other variables. This leads us to reject the commonly maintained assumption that a coalition of “ends against the middle” determines local school funding, and to conclude instead that the median-income voter is decisive. It also allows us to estimate the perceived relative efficiency advantage of private schooling, which we find to be about 30% at the margin.

Religious Participation Versus Shopping: What Makes People Happier?

In this paper, we first explore how an exogenous increase in the opportunity cost of religious participation affects an individual’s religious participation and reported happiness, using data from the General Social Survey. The exogenous shift in the cost of religious participation is a result of the repeal of so-called blue laws that restrict retail activity on Sundays. We find that repealing blue laws causes a significant decline in the religious participation of women and in their happiness. For men, we do not observe any effect on happiness, while the estimate of the effect on church attendance is similar in magnitude to that for women but is imprecise. We also use repeal as an instrumental variable for church attendance and provide direct evidence that church attendance has a significant positive effect on happiness.

Religiosity and Parochial School Choice: Cause or Effect?.

In this study, we examine the effect of religiosity as measured by attendance at religious services on religious school choice. Particular attention is given to the possibly endogenous relationship between school choice and religiosity. We find that religiosity has an important causal effect on the demand for parochial schools. It is also shown that religiosity is substantially biased downward in OLS and probit estimates of parochial school choice. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for estimating the treatment effect of private school attendance on student outcomes.

The Economics of Catholic Schools

Abstract This article examines Catholic schooling in the United States. The article is organized as follows. First, an overview of Catholic schooling in the United States is given. Second, the determinants of the demand for Catholic schools are reviewed. Third, literature on the effects of Catholic schooling is presented. Although the focus of this article is on Catholic schooling in the United States, some attention is also given to Catholic schooling in other countries.