Three essays on public economics: Teacher training, accountability, and public pensions

This dissertation analyzes three different public economic policy issues. The second and third chapters investigate implications of economic policies affecting the teacher labor market, and in particular their effect on teacher shortages in United States. In the second chapter, I analyze the relative efficiency of alternative paths to teacher certification compared to traditional programs. I estimate turnover rates for novice teachers who came to teaching through alternative and traditional preparation routes. Differences in attrition rates for graduates of alternative and traditional programs appear only for novice teachers who have 1 year of experience or less. As soon as a teacher gains 2 years of experience, the effect fades out. Using estimated attrition rates in a simulation model, I estimate the upper bound of alternative programs training costs per teacher that makes the efficiency of alternative programs at least equal to that of traditional ones.;In the third chapter, I examine whether and how different types of school accountability affect the supply of teachers. I find no evidence that student-targeted accountability policies affect the likelihood that teachers will be certified to teach in their main assignment fields. School-level accountability policies do influence the teacher shortage, but only in large districts. District-level accountability policies affect teachers both in small and large districts. The effect of accountability policies is more pronounced for high-stakes fields whose testing results are used for school evaluation. However, the impact of accountability policies varies across high-stakes fields as well: accountability policies tend to result in more certified teachers in mathematics while reducing their prevalence in English language arts.;In the fourth chapter, I analyze rates of return that public pension funds use to project their future assets. Using a theoretical model for an optimal investment strategy I discuss deviations from optimality caused by the influence of labor unions on the pension funds. Then, I empirically test whether labor unions do affect the investment strategy of public pension funds. The regression estimation results confirm that the pressure of labor unions that are interested in high rates of return may cause deviations from the optimal investment strategy. Public pension funds in states with strong unions tend to use riskier investment strategies, compatible with higher rates of return but at the cost of greater risk.