The Economic Value of Breaking Bad Misbehavior, Schooling and the Labor Market

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Economic Value of Breaking Bad: Misbehavior, Schooling and the Labor Market * Prevailing research argues that childhood misbehavior in the classroom is bad for schooling and, presumably, bad for adult outcomes. In contrast, we argue that childhood misbehavior represents some underlying non-cognitive skills that are valuable in the labor market. Terms of use: Documents inWe follow work from psychology and categorize observed classroom misbehavior into two underlying latent factors. We then estimate a model of educational attainment and earnings outcomes, allowing the impact of each of the two factors to vary by outcome. We find one of the factors, labeled in the psychological literature as externalizing behavior (and linked, for example, to aggression), reduces educational attainment yet increases earnings.Unlike most models where non-cognitive skills that increase human capital through education also increase labor market skills, our findings illustrate how some non-cognitive skills can be productive in some economic contexts and counter-productive in others.Policies designed to promote human capital accumulation could therefore have mixed effects or even negative economic consequences, especially for policies that target noncognitive skill formation for children or adolescents which are aimed solely at improving educational outcomes. JEL Classification:J10, J20, I20

The Right Stuff? Personality and Entrepreneurship

“…In a seminal paper, Evans and Jovanovic (1989) show that credit constraints 6 Other papers include that by Lundberg (2012), who shows that the pecuniary returns to personality factors vary both by tenure and by educational group, suggesting that different personality traits may enhance productivity in some occupations, but not others. Levine and Rubinstein (2017) show that deviant behavior can lead to successful entrepreneurship and Papageorge, Ronda, and Zheng (2016) show that some forms of childhood misbehavior capture socio-emotional skills that predict higher earnings despite also being associated with lower educational attainment. Prada and Urzúa (2016) show that mechanical skill can reduce four-year college attendance -not necessarily due to low academic ability, but instead due to high returns in the labor market conditional on not attaining a four-year degree.…”

Educational gender gaps

“…Papageorge et al . (2019) find that externalizing behavior, though it reduces the educational attainment of men, increases their earnings.…”

Discriminating Behavior: Evidence of Teachers' Grading Bias

“…Researchers have emphasized that socially productive skills include not only traditionally studied cognitive abilities, but also behavioral and socio-emotional factors such as perseverance, selfcontrol, academic behaviors, and prosociality. In recent years, numerous studies have documented the central role played by these noncognitive skills in shaping educational attainment and adult outcomes (Segal, 2013;Heckman et al, 2006;Papageorge et al, 2019;Deming, 2017;Kautz and Zanoni, 2014). 1 Importantly from a policy standpoint, there is also ample evidence suggesting that these skills are malleable, and can be influenced by school and teacher quality, home environment, and educational interventions (Jackson, 2018;Bertrand and Pan, 2013;Heckman et al, 2013;Jackson et al, 2020;Alan et al, 2019).…”