TY - RPRT AU - Gradstein, Mark AU - Justman, Moshe TI - Understanding Compulsory Schooling Legislation: A Formal Model and Implications for Empirical Analysis PY - 2009/Sep/ PB - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) CY - Bonn T2 - IZA Discussion Paper IS - 4420 UR - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp4420 AB - We construct a simple model of compulsory schooling in which legislation and compliance are endogenously determined by individuals disciplined by social norms, optimizing their voting decisions and the school attendance of their children. The model provides a formal framework for interpreting empirical results on the effect of compulsory-schooling legislation (CSL) on enrollment. This sheds light on the use of CSL as an instrumental variable to identify the benefits of schooling, suggesting how the estimates it produces may be biased. KW - compliance norms KW - compulsory schooling KW - education ER -