nep-edu New Economics Papers
on Education
Issue of 2025–11–17
four papers chosen by
Nádia Simões, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa 


  1. Do Test Scores Help Teachers Give Better Track Advice to Students? A Principal Stratification Analysis By Andrea Ichino; Fabrizia Mealli; Javier Viviens
  2. The Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Student Outcomes in a New Era of Immigration Policy in the United States By David N. Figlio; Umut Özek
  3. Degrees of Demand: Price Elasticity in Higher Education By Claire Crawford; Robbie Maris; Fabien Petit; Gill Wyness
  4. Educated to Be Mothers? School Reform and Demographic Backlash By Gema Lax-Martinez; Marco Le Moglie; Matteo Sandi

  1. By: Andrea Ichino; Fabrizia Mealli; Javier Viviens
    Abstract: We study whether access to standardized test scores improves the quality of teachers' secondary school track recommendations, using Dutch data and a metric based on Principal Stratification in a quasi-randomized setting. Allowing teachers to revise their recommendations when test results exceed expectations increases the share of students successfully placed in more demanding tracks by at least 6%, but misplaces 7% of weaker students. However, only implausibly high weights on the short-term losses of students who must change track because of misplacement would justify prohibiting test-score-based upgrades. Access to test scores also induces fairer recommendations for immigrant and low-SES students.
    Date: 2025–11
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2511.05128
  2. By: David N. Figlio; Umut Özek
    Abstract: This study presents the first evidence, to our knowledge, of the effects of the surge in interior immigration apprehensions in 2025 in the United States on student academic performance using detailed student-level administrative records from Florida. We find evidence that immigration enforcement reduced test scores for both U.S.-born and foreign-born Spanish-speaking students while also reducing the likelihood that these students are involved in disciplinary incidents in schools. Both of these effects are more pronounced for students in middle and high schools.
    JEL: I24
    Date: 2025–11
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34452
  3. By: Claire Crawford (Institute for Fiscal Studies; UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities); Robbie Maris (UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities); Fabien Petit (University of Barcelona; UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities); Gill Wyness (Centre for Economic Performance, LSE; UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities)
    Abstract: Tuition fees are a critical source of revenue for universities, yet how student demand responds to changes in fees remains poorly understood. Using administrative data from one of the largest UK universities between 2019 and 2025, we estimate the price elasticity of demand for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. Our analysis distinguishes between the application and enrolment stages, accounts for persistence in demand across cohorts, and incorporates fee data from competitor institutions to estimate cross-price elasticities. We find that postgraduate students are substantially more price-sensitive than undergraduates, with estimated elasticities of -0.27 for applications and -0.13 for enrolments. Undergraduate demand is largely price-inelastic. Elasticities vary sharply across countries: applicants from emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, and Turkey display positive application elasticities - consistent with tuition functioning as a signal of quality - while students from Europe and the Americas exhibit conventional price sensitivity. Subject-level variation is more muted: demand for engineering and other STEM disciplines is effectively inelastic, consistent with high expected earnings, while other subjects display stronger negative elasticities. We also document strong persistence in demand across cohorts within countries, suggesting peer-driven information spillovers. Finally, we find limited responsiveness to competitors' tuition at the application stage but positive cross-price elasticity at enrolment, indicating substitution effects once offers are received. These results provide the most comprehensive and recent evidence on tuition responsiveness in UK higher education, highlighting how price sensitivity differs across stages, markets, and subjects.
    Keywords: Higher Education; Tuition Fees; Price Elasticity; International Students; Cross-Price Elasticity.
    JEL: I22 I23 D12 L11
    Date: 2025–11
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucl:cepeow:25-13
  4. By: Gema Lax-Martinez; Marco Le Moglie; Matteo Sandi
    Abstract: Social norms play a critical role in society. This paper studies how difficult it is to manipulate social norms and whether efforts to do so may result in a backlash. We study the 1945 reform of primary education implemented under Franco’s regime in Spain, which promoted nationalist-religious values and emphasized women’s domestic roles. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure between birth cohorts, we show that women exposed to the reform have fewer children and tend to reject the regime’s promoted gender norms. These findings highlight the unintended long-term consequences that state-led efforts to engineer social norms can generate.
    Keywords: education, fertility
    JEL: I21 J13 N44
    Date: 2025
    URL: https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12251

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