Widening access to grammar schools: the educational impact in Northern Ireland.

What are the overall effects on educational attainment of widening access to the more academic track? Research by Eric Maurin and Sandra McNally investigates using the 'natural experiment' of the grammar school system in Northern Ireland, which has survived long after its dismantlement in England.

Educational Effects of Widening Access to the Academic Track: A Natural Experiment

It is difficult to know whether widening access to schools which provide a more academically oriented general education makes a difference to average educational achievement. We make use of reforms affecting admission to the 'high ability' track in Northern Ireland, but not England. The comparison of educational outcomes between Northern Ireland and England before and after the reform identifies the net effect of expanding the academic track to accommodate more students. This is composed of the direct effect of the more academic track on individual performance and the indirect effect arising on account of the change in peer group composition. Our paper is relevant to debate on the consequences of ability tracking and of expanding access to the academic track.education, tracking, selection

Sentence Reductions and Recidivism: Lessons from the Bastille Day Quasi Experiment

This paper exploits the collective pardon granted to individuals incarcerated in French prisons on the 14th of July, 1996 (Bastille Day) to identify the effect of collective sentence reductions on recidivism. The collective pardon generated a very significant discontinuity in the relationship between the number of weeks of sentence reduction granted to inmates and their prospective date of release. We show that the same discontinuity exists in the relationship between recidivism probability five years after the release and prospective date of release. Overall, the Bastille Day quasi experiment suggests that collective sentence reductions increase recidivism and do not represent a cost-effective way to reduce incarceration rates or prisons' overcrowding.crime, prison, deterrence effect, recidivism

A large scale experiment: wages and educational expansion in France

We evaluate the wage impact of the strong and rapid increase in schooling levels experienced by the cohorts born after WWII in France. In order to identify the causal effect of education, we exploit the fact that the small group of people graduating from elite education (Grandes Ecoles) remained stable, while the rest of the system experienced tremendous transformation. This provides a well defined control group. Using large scale labor force surveys for the 1990's, we find that the cohorts that received more education have a lower wage gap, relative to Grandes Ecoles. We show that such a large scale experiment measures a social return to schooling even in the presence of signaling, whereas strategies based on quasi-experiments are not necessarily robust to signaling. Our instrumental variable estimation finds returns to schooling very similar to the rest of the literature, which is a strong case against the signaling hypothesis.education ; returns to schooling ; natural experiment ; signaling

Children of the revolution.

New research by Eric Maurin and Sandra McNally reveals that France's short-lived 'revolution' of May 1968 had long-term benefits for the angry students - and later for their children. These findings have important implications for the debate about widening access to higher education.