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- Kessel, Dany, 1982-
(författare)
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School Choice, School Performance and School Segregation : Institutions and Design
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four self-contained chapters. The first chapter, Are Parents Uninformed? – The Impact of School Performance Information on School Choice Behavior and Student Assignment, is co-authored by Elsisabet Olme. We investigate the effects of school performance information on school choice behavior and student assignment. A randomly selected group of students, about to choose middle school, were provided with information about the performance of the available schools. Households that received the information became more prone to choose a top-performing school. This effect is driven by native and high-skilled households. We simulate how this change in choice behavior translates into changes in school assignment. We find that enrollment in the top-performing schools increases but the effect is muted by limited capacity. We also find that the treatment increases the gap in school performance between advantaged and disadvantaged households, decreases segregation in terms of migration background and increases segregation in terms of parental skill-level. The second chapter, School Choice Priority Structures and School Segregation, is also co-authored by Elsisabet Olme. We evaluate how school segregation is affected by altering the priority structures in a school choice program. We evaluate three priority structures, one proximity-based, one lottery-based and one based on soft quotas. Using actual choice data and simulations we find that that priority structures do affect school segregation. When reserving seats for different groups, schools are less segregated compared to when using systems where priorities are based on proximity or a lottery. We find that the average costs in terms of welfare are limited but that the different priority structures benefit different subgroups. In the third chapter, Debiasing the Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete – The Effects of General Information on the Gender Gap and Efficiency, I explore if informing people about the gender differences in the willingness to compete and the accompanying inefficiencies can reduce said differences and inefficiencies. In an experiment where the participants got to choose whether to compete or not, a random sample of participants were informed about the gender differences in willingness to compete and the related inefficiencies. Among those not informed, men were much more likely to compete than women. There were also significant inefficiencies from low-performing men choosing to compete and high-performing women choosing not to. The treatment reversed the gender gap and significantly reduced inefficiency. The fourth chapter, The Housing Wealth Effect: Quasi-Experimental Evidence is co-authored by Roine Vestman and Björn Tyrefors Hinnerich. We exploit a quasi-experiment that occurred in Stockholm in 2007 when the contract of Stockholm's city airport was unexpectedly renewed. We estimate an immediate shock of approximately 16 percent to house prices close to the airport. This source of price variation is ideal to identify housing wealth effects since it is local and unrelated to variation in macroeconomic conditions. Using a household data set with granular geographic information on primary residence, we find an MPC on cars of less than 0.2 cents per dollar.
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| 2. |
- Österling, Anders, 1982-
(författare)
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Housing Markets and Mortgage Finance
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This Ph.D. thesis deals with questions related to the housing market, and answers the questions: "Does it matter if housing markets are underpriced?" and "How do the legal system and the loan contract affect those who default on their mortgage payments?"When selling a home, a popular marketing strategy is to set the list price far below market value. The idea is that a low list price will attract loads of buyers, who will push up the sale price. This thesis finds that a voluntary reform can reduce underpricing in the short run. Further, underpriced housing markets do indeed require more attention from potential buyers during all stages — online, at open houses, and during the bidding. This extra search effort is costly to society. However, underpricing is found not to affect the sale price, the time to sell, who the buyers are, or how hard the real estate agent works.The household's choice to default on a mortgage depends on the cost of the default (the legal system) and the mortgage contract. By studying a heterogeneous agent consumption/savings lifecycle model, this thesis finds that households prefer "lender friendly" laws that are costly for the homeowners upon default. This is because costly defaults yield fewer defaulters and thus lower interest rates, and thus are cheaper for non-defaulters. Households always prefer non-amortizing mortgages except when defaults do not have any cost associated with them, and they prefer adjustable rates over fixed rates. The benefits of costly defaults are particularly large for non-amortizing mortgages.The thesis concludes with the development of a new mathematical method to solve a particular class of dynamic programming problems, using stochastic simulated grids and nearest-neighbour interpolation.
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