| Abstract: |
We use a sharp, exogenous and repeated change in the value of leisure to
identify the impact of student effort on educational achievement. The
treatment arises from the partial overlap of the world’s major international
football tournaments with the exam period in England. Our data enable a clean
difference-in-difference design. Performance is measured using the high-stakes
tests that all students take at the end of compulsory schooling. We find a
strongly significant effect: the average impact of a fall in effort is 0.12
SDs of student performance, significantly larger for male and disadvantaged
students, as high as many educational policies. |