Spare the Rod? Principals, Agents, and Corporal Punishment in Public Schools

Previous studies have found a puzzlingly insignificant relationship between public school students' performance and school inputs. This study uses the principal-agent framework to investigate the teacher's role in explaining this puzzle. For this purpose, it addresses the issue of corporal punishment in elementary and secondary public schools. Using a panel of data on 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, followed from 1990 to 2000, I find that, in the relevant range, corporal punishment has a negative effect on student performance as measured by eight and fourth graders NAEP mathematics test scores. This result indicates a misalignment between students' and teachers' incentives that leads to an inefficient use of inputs