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American Economic Review Vol. 104 No. 5 2014

Equalizing Superstars: The Internet and the Democratization of Education

Daron Acemoglu1; David Laibson2; John A. List3

1 Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02142-1347 (e-mail: ) · 2 Department of Economics, Harvard University, 1805 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (e-mail: ) · 3 Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 (e-mail: )

Abstract

Internet-based educational resources are proliferating rapidly. One concern associated with these (potentially transformative) technological changes is that they will be disequalizing—as many technologies of the last several decades have been—creating superstar teachers and a winner-take-all education system. These important concerns notwithstanding, we contend that a major impact of web-based educational technologies will be the democratization of education: educational resources will be more equally distributed, and lower-skilled teachers will benefit. At the root of our results is the observation that skilled lecturers can only exploit their comparative advantage if other teachers complement those lectures with face-to-face instruction. This complementarity will increase the quantity and quality of face-to-face teaching services, potentially increasing the marginal product and wages of lower-skill teachers.

DOI
10.1257/aer.104.5.523
Volume
104
Issue
5
Pages
523-527
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

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