The random assignment to the two separate groups of students who are
otherwise similar — in their measured
characteristics and the fact that they expressed a desire to attend a charter school — enables us to isolate the impact of attending a charter school.
Thus, the NAHB analysis controls for the impact of household
characteristics on expenditures, and, nevertheless, finds that a home purchase alters the spending behavior of homeowners and that
otherwise similar homeowners spend more across all three categories compared to non-moving owners during the first two years after moving.