Four Essays on the Determinants of Human Capital Accumulation in Norway

221 Pages·2017·11.47 MB·English

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ISBN: 978-82-308-3856-3
Four Essays on the Determinants of
Human Capital Accumulation in Norway
Leroy Andersland
TAhevshisa nfdolri nthgef Doreggrraedee onf pPhhiilloossoopphhiiaaee dDooctcotorr( p(Ph.hdD.))
avte tdh eU Uninvievresristeittye to if BBeerrggeenn
2017
2017
Dato for disputas: 1111
Date of defence: 19.01.2018
© Copyright Leroy Andersland
The material in this publication is covered by the provisions of the Copyright Act.
Year: 2017
Title: Four Essays on the Determinants of Human Capital Accumulation in Norway
Name: Leroy Andersland
Print: Skipnes Kommunikasjon / University of Bergen

For my family and friends.
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Acknowledgements
I thank my supervisors Katrine V. Løken and Espen Bratberg for guiding my work on this
dissertation; the results would not have been the same without their thoughtful guidance. My
main supervisor Katrine has been very helpful in developing the ideas and the methodological
framework of the analysis. Espen contributed to the methodological framework and by
helping me understand the direction in which I should lead the work.
I also thank my co-author Øivind A. Nilsen who has been both a mentor and a co-
author on the article on which we collaborated. Sergio Firpo, Magne Mogstad and Kjell G.
Salvanes have provided important guidance.
My fellow PhD students and the postdoctoral fellows at the places I have studied have
been both academic and non-academic sources of inspiration. A special thanks goes to Sigurd
Birkeland, Manudeep Bhuller, Erlend Bøe, Inger Sommerfeldt Ervik, Cathrin Fløgstad, Ingvil
Gaarder, Julian Vedeler Johnsen, Andreas Kostøl, Sturla Løkken, Andreas Steinmayr, and
Hans Martin Straume.
My research stays would not have been as productive without the help of Rolf
Aaberge, Prashant Bharadwaj, Gordon Dahl, and Ariel Kalil. The Meltzer Foundation,
Trygdegruppen, and SV-fakultet have provided additional funding.

Oslo, August 2017
Leroy Andersland

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Abstract

This thesis consists of four articles that use administrative data to explore the Norwegian
education system, from childcare to high school. The goal of the dissertation as a whole is to
uncover and quantify the impact of mechanisms that explain why some students prosper,
while others do not. The first article seeks to determine whether teachers discriminate against
students based on observable characteristics of the students that are available to us. Previous
literature has provided inconclusive results on whether, for example, males and immigrants
are discriminated against in Norway and Sweden. The standard procedure has been to
compare grades awarded by the student’s teacher (non-blind) with grades awarded by
examiners who do not know the identity of the student (blind). This article makes three main
contributions to the literature. First, it provides a coherent econometric framework in which to
study grade discrimination in schools. Secondly, results are presented from several different
types of data sets, which helps determine the underlying structure that determine teacher
grading. Lastly, evidence is presented implying that an adjustment should be made when
comparing non-blind and blind grading, since the scores are not directly comparable. This
correction would partly reconcile some of the previous contradictory findings in the literature.
Generally, this correction takes into account the fact that discrimination against students
belonging to lower scoring groups is often more significant when holding ability fixed.
The second article explores the nature of peer effects in high school. Peer effects can
be defined as a composite of factors that explain why interacting with peers with certain
behaviors or characteristics affects a student’s own behavior. In 2005, the city of Bergen was
exposed to a reform that changed the high school intake system from a geographical,
neighborhood-based intake system to a GPA-based intake system. The reform greatly altered
the composition of peer characteristics for comparable students before and after the reform.
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The reform led to a greater degree of student tracking; low-achieving students received lower
variation in peer characteristics and low achieving peers, while high-achieving students
reviewed lower variation in peer characteristics and higher achieving peers. In line with recent
findings from field experiments, we find that students from all ability levels gained from this
reform, with low-ability students appearing to gain the most. This article makes three main
contributions to the literature. First, we use a new type of natural experiment to explore peer
effects. Earlier natural experiments included voucher lotteries, desegregation programs, and
high school acceptance limits. Secondly, this article contains an analysis of tracking using a
natural experiment. Our results are directly relevant for policymakers trying to determine
what type of intake system to use. Third, we present evidence on several interesting high
school outcomes such as grades, exam scores, and absence rates.
The third article explores the effect of attending childcare on children. In recent years,
formal childcare has become the dominant mode of care for children aged 1–5 in Norway.
Yet, the effect of attending public childcare on different groups of children is still not well
understood. This article employs the significant capacity buildup of the Norwegian childcare
sector in the 2000s to explore the effect of formal childcare. The findings suggest that the
effects of formal childcare are heterogeneous. We find no average effect of the expansion,
while we do find positive effects in municipalities with high childcare quality, and negative
effects in municipalities with low childcare quality. The analysis reveals that the reform
mostly affects children aged 3–5 in municipalities with high childcare quality, while it affects
children aged 1–2 in municipalities with low childcare quality. In addition, positive effects
seem to be driven by children of high socioeconomic status, while negative effects are
stronger for children of low socioeconomic status. This article contributes with an analysis of
a recent expansion in universal childcare in Norway. The results confirm previous findings of
positive effects for 3–5 year old children in formal childcare using a new natural experiment
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