To raise school participation, many programs in developing countries eliminate or reduce private contributions to education. Using data from a randomized experiment in Ecuador, we ironically find that announcing a free school uniform program had a negative impact on attendance. The school uniforms were distributed in only 63% of the schools that were told that they would get them, thus this negative impact could have been generated by creating false expectations of free distribution, or also by a sunk cost effect on those who did actually receive the uniforms. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.
CITATION STYLE
Hidalgo, D., Onofa, M., Oosterbeek, H., & Ponce, J. (2013). Can provision of free school uniforms harm attendance? Evidence from Ecuador. Journal of Development Economics, 103(1), 43–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.12.006
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