How Parents’ Beliefs About Their Children’s Academic Ability Affect Educational Investments

(家长对孩子学习能力的认知如何影响其教育投入)

时间：2023年3月24日（周五）10:00-11:30

地点：北京大学经济学院107会议室

主讲人：干天琪

主持老师：（北大经院）王熙

参与老师：（北大经院）王一鸣、刘蕴霆、王法

（北大国发院）黄卓、张俊妮、孙振庭

（北大新结构）胡博

报告摘要：Using a randomized field experiment with parents of high school students in China, I examine the causal effects of parents' belief in their children's ability on educational investment and children's academic performance. I document two types of information frictions that result in systematic biases in parents' beliefs about children's ability: overconfidence in future performance and underestimating college admission requirements. I then introduce two interventions to correct parents' belief biases. In the first intervention, I use machine-learning techniques to generate predictions on children's future academic performance and distribute them to randomly selected parents. In the second intervention, I give randomly selected parents a report that lists the feasible colleges corresponding to their children's current academic performance. I find that both interventions lead to dramatic reductions in belief biases. In addition, parents report higher levels of monetary investments in children's education, which significantly improved children's academic performance. I also find significant non-linearity for the impacts of ability belief on parental educational investments around their aspirations.

主讲人简介：干天琪，中国人民大学经济学院讲师，博士毕业于马里兰大学帕克分校，主要研究领域为发展经济学，实验经济学和应用计量经济学，其研究涉及家长对子女的教育投资决策、信息摩擦、同群效应等方向。