Economic essays on students' effort

Resumo

This thesis is composed of three independent essays dedicated to studying student’s performance mediators. As suggested by the title, the focus of the three works lies on elements that might affect how much effort students are choosing to exert. The first of the three essays studies the interaction between two effort inhibitors - thermal discomfort and mental fatigue - in the short-term dynamics of effort choosing. Its empirical results indicate that the negative effect from thermal discomfort over performance is stronger by the beginning of the exam than by the end of it. This mitigation effect throughout the exam may be caused by smaller accumulation of fatigue due to the effort inhibition on the beginning of the exam, consequence of thermal discomfort. This hypothesis is supported by empirical and theoretical results presented in this essay. The second essay present in this thesis looks once more to effects from thermal discomfort on student’s performance - this time looking into its impact over learning. Its results indicate that the incidence of days of extreme heat during the school-year jeopardize their performance at the end of the year. A similar negative effect is also caused by warmer summers or colder winters, suggesting that students learn more on years with milder temperatures. Finally, on the last essay, we leave behind elements that affect the cost of exerting effort and look into the benefits from this effort. We leverage the expansion of a public vocational-technical college in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo to estimate the effect from the presence of public higher ˜ education in educational performance from high-school students. We find an improvement on the performance of students from the municipalities that received a new college after its creation, specially for the students most likely to engage in this type of college.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Tese

Ano

2024

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/36938

Temas

Economia

Palavras-chave

EsforçoDesconforto térmicoAprendizagemExpansão universitáriaDesconfortoIncentivo dos estudantesEffortThermal discomfortLearningHeat and learningUniversity expansionStudents’ incentivesEconomiaEstudantesDesempenho