Abstracts Economics

Three Essays in the Economics of Education

by Hammad Shaikh

A recently emerging literature in public economics uses structural models to inform the design of public policies. In these papers, credible identification of structural parameters can be challenging as they mainly utilize observational administrative data. In contrast, structural parameters are credibly identified using experimental data in the growing behaviouraleconomics literature. Although the scope for policy design is more limited in these papers as the experiments are typically conducted under ideal settings in a laboratory. The three chapters in this thesis integrates methodologies from both the public economics and behavioural economics literatures, by using evidence from field experiments and estimable models of student effort choice to design policies for improving students' academic outcomes in higher education. Chapter 1 credibly estimates the cumulative learning technology in a foundational STEM course. To do so, I carry out a field experiment which generates period-by-period exogenous variation in effort allocation, enabling me to identify dynamic interactions across effort inputs in the learning technology. I find evidence of dynamic learning complementarities as the marginal benefit to studying in each learning period is increasing in prior knowledge accumulated. Chapter 2 examines how students in STEM can be guided to learn effectively through the design of the course grading scheme. I first develop and estimate a multi-stage behavioural model of student effort supply. The estimated model allows me to explore the efficacy of changing assignment grading weights to improve student learning. I find that the simulated weights that maximize learning are decreasing across assignments, serving to increase effort by myopic students early in the course when they acquire foundational skills. Finally, Chapter 3 studies the provision of online public goods in the context of voluntary online student discussion boards – a prominent feature of distance education used to support learning at scale. I conduct two randomized informational interventions, successfully nudging students to sign-up and then contribute further to the discussion board. I find that having access to and participating in discussion board significantly improves students’ learning outcomes. Additionally, I find that free-riding behaviour can be mitigated by offering students appropriate bonus credit for writing valuable content that is endorsed by the instructor.