Healthy school meals and educational outcomes

This paper provides field evidence on the effects of a diet on educational outcomes, exploiting a campaign lead in the UK in 2004, which introduced drastic changes in the meals offered in the schools of one Borough – Greenwich- shifting from low-budget processed meals towards healthier options. We evaluate the effect of the campaign on educational outcomes in primary schools using a difference in differences approach; comparing educational outcomes in primary schools (key stage 2 outcomes more specifically) before and after the reform, using the neighbouring Local Education Authorities as a control group. We find evidence that educational outcomes did improve significantly in English and Science. We also find that authorised absences – which are most likely linked to illness and health- fell by 14%

Grade retention and educational attainment. Exploiting the 2001 Reform by the French-Speaking Community of Belgium and Synthetic Control Methods

This paper evaluates the effects of grade retention on attainment by exploiting a reform introduced in 2001 in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium whereby the possibility of grade retention in grade 7 was reintroduced. It uses the Synthetic Control Method to identify the best possible pre-treatment control. Data come from three waves of the PISA study (corresponding to periods before and after the reform) that contains test scores of representative samples of 15 year-olds. These are used essentially to answer two questions. First, has the 2001 grade repetition reform at least succeeded at filtering out weaker pupils, pupils who would presumably be disadvantaged by being promoted directly to higher grades. This is a minimum condition for grade retention to be justifiable. Second, do these “treated” students achieve better/worse when they repeat (and attend a lower grade) than when they are “socially promoted”. (and attend the age 15 reference grade 10)? We find significant evidence of positive screening but we fail to demonstrate that those filtered out perform differently under the “grade repetition”.regime than under the “social promotion”regime.Grade retention, educational attainment, synthetic control method

How private is private information?:The ability to spot deception in an economic game

We provide experimental evidence on the ability to detect deceit in a buyer-seller game with asymmetric information. Sellers have private information about the buyer's valuation of a good and sometimes have incentives to mislead buyers. We examine if buyers can spot deception in face-to-face encounters. We vary (1) whether or not the buyer can interrogate the seller, and (2) the contextual richness of the situation. We find that the buyers' prediction accuracy is above chance levels, and that interrogation and contextual richness are important factors determining the accuracy. These results show that there are circumstances in which part of the information asymmetry is eliminated by people's ability to spot deception

Friendships and Favouritism on the Schoolground - A Framed Field Experiment

We present experimental evidence on favouritism practices. Children compete in teams in a tournament. After the first round of a real effort task, children indicate which group member they would prefer to do the task in the second round, for the benefit of the team. Friends are much more likely to be chosen than others after controlling for performance. We also find that children who are favoured by their friend subsequently increase performance. Consequently, favouritism does not hurt efficiency. These results show the importance of observing performance ex post in order to properly evaluate the efficiency implications of favouritism