Delivering Education to the Underserved through a Public-Private Partnership Program in Pakistan

Felipe Barrera‐Osorio; David S. Blakeslee; Matthew Hoover; Leigh Linden; Dhushyanth Raju; Stephen P. Ryan

doi:10.1162/rest_a_01002

Delivering Education to the Underserved through a Public-Private Partnership Program in Pakistan

Felipe Barrera‐Osorio¹; David S. Blakeslee²; Matthew Hoover³; Leigh Linden⁴; Dhushyanth Raju⁵; Stephen P. Ryan⁶

¹ Vanderbilt University · ² New York University Abu Dhabi · ³ Gallup · ⁴ University of Texas at Austin, BREAD, J-PAL, IPA, IZA, and NBER · ⁵ World Bank · ⁶ Washington University in St. Louis, CESifo, and NBER

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2022 open access

We evaluate a program that recruited local entrepreneurs to open and operate new schools in 200 underserved villages in Sindh, Pakistan. School operators received a per student subsidy to provide tuition-free primary education, and half the villages received a higher subsidy for females. The program increased enrollment by 32 percentage points and test scores by 0.63 standard deviations, with no difference across the two subsidy schemes. Estimating a structural model of the demand and supply for school inputs, we find that program schools selected inputs similar to those of a social planner who internalizes all the education benefits to society.

DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01002
Volume: 104 (3)
Pages: 399-416
Language: en
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