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This semester I taught my first classes in the development PhD course. With @abhijeetsingh, we created a 3-lecture (9h) mini-series in education and human capital. There’s so much exciting work in this area! A short summary of the topics and papers covered here 
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The first lecture was on: “The determinants of the education decisions”. @orazio_at (2015) EEA Presidential Address is a great way to set up an overarching conceptual framework and identify the main methodological issues on the topic. (2/12)
The theoretical framework by Albornoz, Berlinski, and @cabralestweet (2012) clarifies how educational outcomes are jointly determined by the decisions of different actors. Important to take into account behavioral responses when analyzing the impacts of educ. policies. (3/12)
Credit constraints affect educational decisions, and cash transfers (CT) are powerful solutions to this barrier. Baird, McIntosh, and @BerkOzler12 (2011) is a great paper to motivate the discussion on the relative effectiveness of conditional CT vs unconditional CT. (4/12)
PROGRESA is an influential CCT program and has been widely studied. Two of these papers are @orazio_at, @CostasMeghir, and Santiago (2012) and Todd and Wolpin (2006), which can also be used to introduce the methodology of combining structural estimation with RCTs. (5/12)
Bursztyn and Coffman (2012) investigate CCTs in a context with intrahousehold agency problems. They find that CCTs provide valuable information on the child's school attendance (acting as monitoring devices), and that parents are WTP substantial sums for such mechanisms. (6/12)
Information is another important barrier to education. Jensen (2010) shows the importance of students’ perceived returns to education for educational investment (rather than actual returns). Giving information on future returns leads to increases in educational attainment. (7/12)
@RDizonRoss (2019) on parents' inaccurate beliefs about own child’s ability is an outstanding paper: Important contributions, careful experimental design, and compelling results. I mean, the graphs are fantastic! The clarity of its narrative and arguments is also exemplary (8/12)
Opportunity costs and labor market conditions also shape educational decisions. Some examples are Atkin (2016), which shows that export expansions increase school dropout at critical ages using quasi-exogenous variation (I remembered it from @noto’s labor class!). (9/12)
Also Jensen (2012) RCT, which shows that the increase in employment opportunities for young women in rural areas increases labor force participation, human capital investments (even among school-aged girls), and delayed marriage and childbearing. (10/12)
Lastly, local culture, traditions, and historical contexts are important for educational decisions. I like Munshi and Rosezweig (2006) to emphasize the role of traditional institutions such as caste networks in shaping educational investments and career choices. (11/12)
@profnavaashraf, @BauNatalie, @DrNathanNunn, @AlesVoena (2020) is excellent to highlight that the effects on educational investments may vary by the practice of local customs, like the bride price. The model clarifies the non-obvious channels for this heterogeneity. (12/12)
