Can Management Improve Productivity? Experimental Evidence from Education

Schooling is not necessarily learning. Children in developing countries, or even underprivileged pupils in the developed world, attend school, yet many remain uneducated. For instance, at similar years of schooling, a typical 15-year-old Brazilian pupil would need seven more years at a school in Brazil to achieve the learning of a typical 15-year-old European pupil. This study provides experimental evidence of the power of management to boost the learning production of public schools. We developed a new management programme to improve school management at the cost of USD PPP GDP 15.22 per pupil per year. No financial incentive. No personnel or system changes. No teaching time increase. The programme's ATE estimates were 0.916 standard deviations (SD) for school management, 0.226 (0.059) SD for reading and 0.237 (0.059) SD for mathematics (cost-effectiveness of 1.95 `Additional SD per $100 (PPP)'). The treatment intensity analysis (IV estimates) showed that the impact of increasing the school management by one score point (on a scale from one, worst management, to five, best management) was 0.680 (0.245) SD for reading and 0.714 (0.265) SD for mathematics (cost-effectiveness of 15.61 `Additional SD per $100 (PPP)'). Schools that improved their management level by one score point due to the treatment delivered in two years to their pupils the learning equivalent to what is learnt in more than four years in a control school, i.e., high implementation schools were around 110% more productive in providing learning to their pupils. Furthermore, the IV analysis showed that an increase of one SD in management has a causal effect of 0.24 SD in pupils' learning. JEL Codes: C93, H83, I20, J24 and M10.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Puccioni, Felipe

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Cavalcanti, Tiago

• Management
• Education
• Causal Inference
• Randomised Field Experiment
• Learning
• Productivity

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/6affbff0-f8b3-4d08-8bf3-a97ad3c975de/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.113227

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/375680