Article

Valuing elementary schools: evidence from public school acquisitions in Beijing The Scandinavian Journal of Economics

Author

Huayi Yu, Professor, School of Public Administration and Policy, RUC

Abstract

We utilize government-sanctioned public school acquisitions in Beijing to estimate individuals' willingness to pay for enrollment eligibility in sought- after elementary schools. The spatial and temporal variation in these acquisitions allows us to estimate a hedonic pricing model in the difference-in-difference framework. Comparing regular elementary schools that are acquired by sought-after schools to those that are not, we find an average price increase of 7% for apartments in the catchment areas of acquired schools. This percentage increase is both statistically and economically significant, and it does not vary by the size of the apartment. We also find heterogeneous price effects for different types of acquisitions, defined by their post-acquisition organizational structures, but these differences are not statistically significant.

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