Do Private High Schools Make A Difference? Learning the Causal Effects of Private Schooling from a Natural Experiment in South Korea

Abstract: Educational policy makers have had keen interest in understanding how to improve the efficiency of educational inputs. One of the central debates in education policies is whether initiatives involving the provision of private school vouchers and the establishment of Charter and independent schools would yield better student outcomes. In particular, a large body of literature in economics, education, and sociology has examined whether students attending private schools or charter schools outperform students attending traditional public schools in a wide range of outcomes. However, identifying the causal effects has proven to be difficult as most studies have relied on observational data, where the issue of unobserved selection bias is pervasive (Altonji et al., 2005).