This Thesis focuses on the analysis of contributions to education, by private companies. Specifically, it centers on the motivations that originate them, and their effects on the educational performance of students who attend public schools in Colombia. _x000D_ This case study is of special interest, since it represents emerging economy contexts where households make great private-spending efforts on education to compensate low-level public expenditure per student, and yet, despite this, fail to break the persistent gaps in educational access and quality, and great income inequality. Supplementary and consistently with other high social-inequality contexts, private companies have a greater propensity to contribute to the provision of this public good. Indeed, the optimal allocation of both public and private resources is important, in order to raise their impacts and their social returns. _x000D_ The Thesis is structured in six chapters:_x000D_ 1. The first chapter presents the motivation, guide and justification of the Thesis and the methodological option followed, based on the literature gap. _x000D_ 2. The second chapter presents a rigorous and systematic review of the theoretical and empirical literature addressing private company contributions to education, with special reference to the literature of Public Goods, Giving Economics and CSR. The main contributions of the Chapter are a theoretical construct proposal for the concept of ‘private contribution’ and a taxonomy of motivations and effects. This Chapter summarizes types of private contributions, their decision levels, probusiness and prosocial motivations, private and public effects, types of educational institutions and interventions used in the literature. _x000D_ 3. The third chapter is based on interviews with leaders of companies and organizations of the private sector–the companies of which make contributions to educational institutions–, with the purpose of identifying the motivations of the companies to make this type of contributions and the effects they expect for the company and for society. _x000D_ 4. The fourth chapter contains an empirical exercise to estimate the effect of such contributions under an efficiency approach. The main result is a positive effect in 7 of the 16 study subsamples, which does not consistently support the presumption of positive effects declared by business leaders in the previous chapter. _x000D_ 5. The fifth chapter broadens the analysis of the effects of contributions by asking what type of contribution has the greatest effect. The main contribution of this Chapter is a methodology for the comparison of contribution types, which involves a better understanding of contribution effects and it represents a guide for the allocation of resources to achieve a greater effect.
Motivations and effects of the Private Contributions on Public Schools
Alexei Arbona (Author). 27 Sept 2018
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis