Why Do Households Leave School Value Added on the Table? The Roles of Information and Preferencest

Romanian households could choose schools with one standard devi-ation worth of additional value added. Why do households leave value added "on the table"? We study two possibilities: (i) informa-tion and (ii) preferences for other school traits. In an experiment, we inform randomly selected households about schools' value added. These households choose schools with up to 0.2 standard deviations of additional value added. We then estimate a discrete choice model and show that households have preferences for a variety of school traits. As a result, fully correcting households' beliefs would elim-inate at most a quarter of the value added that households leave unexploited. (JEL D12, D83, I21, I28)