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Abstract

Teacher shortage is a growing problem that disproportionately affects disadvantaged students, and is primarily driven by scarcity of narrow-specialty teachers. In this paper I investigate the potential of a novel type of redistributional policy that focuses on allocation efficiency within markets. The fact that school teachers face particularly rigid weekly work schedules, coupled with the fact that schedule design is costly for schools, leads to schedules that over-hire narrow-specialty teachers, imposing a negative externality in the local labor market for narrow-specialty teachers. I show that introducing a technology in schools that assists them in designing schedules can significantly reduce over-hiring, leading to a more efficient narrow-specialty teacher allocation within school markets. This type of redistributional policy can reduce overall teacher shortage, as well as reducing teacher allocation inequalities within school markets.