Jishnu Das - Information and Productivity in Education Markets

Why It Matters

Simple, low‑cost information interventions can sustainably raise learning outcomes and reduce costs in low‑income education markets, providing policymakers a powerful lever to address chronic productivity declines.

Key Takeaways

• Information shock raised test scores and reduced costs after six years.
• Gains stemmed from improvements within existing schools, not new entrants.
• Market‑level data reveal supply‑side responses dominate demand shifts.
• Private schools respond to quality signals; public schools remain unresponsive.
• Persistent productivity decline in education underscores need for allocation reforms.

Summary

The presentation examines a market‑level information intervention conducted in rural Pakistan’s mixed education system, part of the broader LEAPS project. By providing parents and teachers with reliable quality data about local schools, researchers created an information shock that persisted for six years, allowing them to assess long‑term effects on learning outcomes and cost efficiency.

Key findings show substantial test‑score gains and lower per‑student expenditures, driven almost entirely by performance improvements within existing schools rather than by school entry or exit. Structural modeling reveals that parents choose schools based on distance, price, and perceived quality, and that private low‑cost schools (charging roughly $1‑2 per month) respond strongly to quality signals, whereas public schools remain largely inert.

The work builds on a literature dating back to Leibenstein’s X‑efficiency critique and Hawkby’s observations of declining education productivity in OECD nations. By randomizing information at the market level, the study isolates supply‑side reactions—showing that better information re‑allocates resources within schools, effectively altering the schools’ production functions.

These results suggest that relatively inexpensive information provision can generate durable productivity gains in low‑income education markets, offering a scalable policy tool to counter the long‑standing decline in educational efficiency and to improve equity across heterogeneous school environments.

Original Description

Jishnu Das is a distinguished professor of public policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His research focuses on health and education in low- and middle-income countries, including how public and private providers deliver services and how policy can improve learning and health outcomes. He has co-developed one of the largest long-running cohort studies on learning outcomes, contributed to research that influenced national health and education programs, and was part of the team behind India’s federal health insurance scheme that reached over 150 million people. Das helped write the World Development Report on Gender and Development and has received numerous awards for his work on health and education policy. He holds degrees in economics from St. Stephen’s College (Delhi), Cambridge University (UK), and Harvard University (USA).