Publication

This paper estimates educational production functions for seven Eastern European transition countries. The authors find substantial effects of student background on educational performance and a much lower impact of resources and the institutional setting. Their results split the analyzed countries in two groups. One features high mean test scores and has progressed far in transition and resembles Western European schooling systems with large effects of family background on student performance and a higher spread of test scores. Schools of the second group produce a denser distribution of educational achievement, characteristic of communist societies.