“Despite the large number of empirical studies estimating the importance of parents in education production functions, few researchers have attempted to account for the potential interactions between school inputs and parents. These interactions, such as households re-optimizing their behavior in response to school policies, have direct implications for the implementation and evaluation of education policies. Researchers may have failed to find significant impact of school resources on achievement by neglecting substitution effects from parents. While increasing resources may improve school quality, if parents respond by reducing effort, the estimated effects of resources will likely be biased downward.
To address this gap in the literature, this paper investigates whether parents are substitutes for or complements to the school environment. More specifically, this paper aims to extend the literature on parental roles by assessing how parents respond to teacher and peer quality.”
