Public Goods, Private Goods, and School Preferences

Abstract

In this research article, Leslie K. Finger and David M. Houston explore how different ideas about the objectives of education can influence families’ schooling preferences and choices. For their study they employed a conjoint experiment embedded in an online survey to examine participants’ preferences for various school characteristics, including distance from home, academic performance as measured by test scores, and the racial/ethnic and economic makeup of the student body. Their evidence suggests a pattern of school choices that could contribute to racial/ethnic segregation.