Does Computer-aided Instruction Improve Children's Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills?: Evidence from Cambodia

The views expressed in the papers are solely those of the author(s), and neither represent those of the organization(s) to which the author(s) belong(s) nor the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry. [...] This research is designed to rigorously estimate the causal impact of the CAI on students’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills, closely working with the gov- ernment of the Kingdom of Cambodia, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and Hanamaru-lab, one of the Japanese private companies, which pro- vides the newly developed CAI apps, called ”Think!Think!”. [...] 4 Econometric specification and Results 4.1 Econometric specification To identify the causal effect of using ”Think!Think!”, we run OLS regression of the following model generates an unbiased estimate of the intent-to-treat effect and the effect of randomly assigning students to be taught using CAI on various outcomes in question. [...] The crucial identifying assumption in this empirical model is that the relation- ship between the exposure to CAI-based app and students’ unobserved ability is orthogonal to the error term, conditional on the controls. [...] 1However, as pointed out by (Imbens, and Wooldridge, 2009), it is technically difficult to separate out the direct effect of the intervention on individual from the indirect effect of the peer on the individual.