Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/21472 
Year of Publication: 
2002
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 485
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We estimate the effect of class size on student performance in 18 countries, combining school fixed effects and instrumental variables to identify random class-size variation between two adjacent grades within individual schools. Conventional estimates of class-size effects are shown to be severely biased by the non-random placement of students between and within schools. Smaller classes exhibit beneficial effects only in countries with relatively low teacher salaries. While we find sizable beneficial effects of smaller classes in Greece and Iceland, the possibility of even small effects is rejected in Japan and Singapore. In 11 countries, we rule out large class-size effects.
Subjects: 
educational production
class size
student sorting
school fixed effects
instrumental variables
TIMSS
JEL: 
I2
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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