nep-edu New Economics Papers
on Education
Issue of 2005‒06‒05
seven papers chosen by
Joao Carlos Correia Leitao
Universidade da Beira Interior

  1. Student Flows and Migration: An Empirical Analysis By Axel Dreher; Panu Poutvaara
  2. Economic Performance and Unemployment: Evidence from an Emerging Economy - Turkey By Hakan Berument; Nukhet Dogan; Aysit Tansel
  3. Returns to Foreign Education: Yet Another But Different Cross Country Analysis By Max Gruetter
  4. Inequality, redistribution and the allocation of public spending in education. A political-economy approach. By Debora Di Gioacchino, Sergio Ginebri, Laura Sabani
  5. Evaluating the Role of Brown vs. Board of Education in School Equalization, Desegregation, and the Income of African Americans By Orley Ashenfelter; William J. Collins; Albert Yoon
  6. Peer effects and textbooks in primary education: Evidence from francophone sub-Saharan Africa By Markus Froehlich; Katharina Michaelowa
  7. Returns to Foreign Education. Yet another but different cross country analysis. By Max Grütter

  1. By: Axel Dreher (Thurgau Institute of Economics and University of Konstanz); Panu Poutvaara (CEBR, Copenhagen Business School, CESifo and IZA Bonn)
    Abstract: Using panel data for 78 countries of origin we examine the impact of student flows to the United States on subsequent migration there over the period 1971-2001. What we find is that the stock of foreign students is an important predictor of subsequent migration. This holds true whether or not the lagged endogenous variable is included. The relationship is robust to the inclusion of time and country dummies, and remains when we account for outliers. The basic results also hold for a cross section of 36 countries of origin and 9 host countries. Our results have important policy implications which we discuss in the last section.
    Keywords: migration, education, student flows, brain drain
    JEL: F22 I2 J61 O15
    Date: 2005–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1612&r=edu
  2. By: Hakan Berument (Bilkent University); Nukhet Dogan (Gazi University); Aysit Tansel (Middle East Technical University and IZA Bonn)
    Abstract: This article examines whether various macroeconomic policy shocks have different effects on overall unemployment rate and the unemployment rate by different levels of education in Turkey. These effects are assessed for total, male and female unemployment rates separately. To examine the relationship, a quarterly VAR model with a recursive order is employed to estimate the effects of real GDP, price, exchange rate, interbank interest rate, money supply and unemployment for the period from 1988:01 to 2003:04. Main findings indicate that a positive income shock reduces total unemployment while positive exchange rate and interbank interest rate innovations both increase the unemployment rate during the initial periods. The responses of high school educated unemployment rate to five macroeconomic variable shocks are different than the response of other educational unemployment rates. Furthermore, the overall results across gender are similar.
    Keywords: unemployment, economic performance and vector autoregressive regression
    JEL: E24 C32
    Date: 2005–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1614&r=edu
  3. By: Max Gruetter (University of Zurich and IZA Bonn)
    Abstract: The main interest of this paper is to compare the value of education systems of different countries. For this reason I use data on workers who have completed their education before immigrating to Switzerland to estimate a country specific return to education. I estimate the standard Mincer-equation with the extension that I additionally allow for country specific returns to education. Results show that there are important differences between the returns to different education systems within Switzerland in the value of the basic education on the one hand and the return to an additional year of education on the other hand.
    Keywords: return to education, immigration, international
    JEL: C13 J61 I21
    Date: 2005–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1615&r=edu
  4. By: Debora Di Gioacchino, Sergio Ginebri, Laura Sabani
    Abstract: The incidence of public expenditure in education appears to be skewed in favour of the middle and upper classes. This paper inquires into the determinants of this bias using a political economy approach. We develop a model with two time periods with an election occurring between the two. In the first period, agents differ in their initial wealth. In the second period, differences in wealth are combined with differences in income. In the first period, the incumbent government issues debt to finance public spending in education and decides how to allocate available resources between primary and tertiary education. Both increase aggregate income, but while investment in primary education reduces income inequality, investment in tertiary education increases it. At the beginning of the second period, a two-party electoral competition is held and probabilistic voting decides the winner. By varying the parameters of the linear income tax, the elected policy-maker can redistribute resources between low and high income individuals, while by choosing a debt default rate she can renege on the promise to fully repay public obligations, redistributing resources from bond-holders to tax-payers. We show that the investment in primary education might not be (politically) viable. Intuitively, investment in primary education, by reducing income inequality with respect to wealth inequality, might increase the desired debt default rate of future policy makers, making issuing debt to finance primary education unfeasible.
    Keywords: policy choices in representative democracies, public investment in education, redistribution, government debt repayment.
    JEL: D78 H63 H42 I28
    Date: 2005–05–27
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mol:ecsdps:esdp05024&r=edu
  5. By: Orley Ashenfelter; William J. Collins; Albert Yoon
    Abstract: In this paper we study the long-term labor market implications of school resource equalization before Brown and school desegregation after Brown. For cohorts born in the South in the 1920s and 1930s, we find that racial disparities in measurable school characteristics had a substantial influence on black males' earnings and educational attainment measured in 1970, albeit one that was smaller in the later cohorts. When we examine the income of male workers in 1990, we find that southern-born blacks who finished their schooling just before effective desegregation occurred in the South fared poorly compared to southern-born blacks who followed behind them in school by just a few years.
    JEL: J7 I28 N32
    Date: 2005–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11394&r=edu
  6. By: Markus Froehlich; Katharina Michaelowa
    Abstract: As opposed to many other school inputs, textbooks have frequently been demonstrated to significantly foster student achievement. Using the rich data set provided by the 'Program on the Analysis of Education Systems' (PASEC) for five francophone, sub-Saharan African countries, this paper goes beyond the estimation of direct effects of textbooks on students' learning and focuses on peer effects resulting from textbooks owned by students' classmates. Applying and extending nonparametric estimation methods from the treatment evaluation literature we separate the direct effect of textbooks from their peer effect. The latter clearly dominates but depends upon the initial level of textbook availability.
    JEL: C14 C21 O15
    Date: 2005–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usg:dp2005:2005-11&r=edu
  7. By: Max Grütter
    Abstract: The main interest of this paper is to compare the value of education systems of different countries. For this reason I use data on workers who have completed their education before immigrating to Switzerland to estimate a country specific return to education. I estimate the standard Mincer-equation with the extension that I additionally allow for country specific returns to education. Results show that there are important differences between the returns to different education systems within Switzerland in the value of the basic education on the one hand and the return to an additional year of education on the other hand.
    Keywords: return to education, immigration, international comparison
    JEL: C13 J61 I21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:iewwpx:246&r=edu

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