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on Education |
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Issue of 2013‒08‒23
eight papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao University of Beira Interior and Technical University of Lisbon |
| By: | Brant Abbott; Giovanni Gallipoli; Costas Meghir (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Yale University); Gianluca Violante (Institute for Fiscal Studies and New York University) |
| Abstract: | This paper compares partial and general equilibrium effects of alternative financial aid policies intended to promote college participation. We build an overlapping generations life-cycle, heterogeneous-agent, incomplete-markets model with education, labour supply, and consumption/saving decisions. Altruistic parents make inter vivos transfers to their children. Labour supply during college, government grants and loans, as well as private loans, complement parental transfers as sources of funding for college education. We find that the current financial aid system in the U.S. improves welfare, and removing it would reduce GDP by two percentage points in the long-run. Any further relaxation of government-sponsored loan limits would have no salient effects. The short-run partial equilibirum effects of expanding tuition grants (especially their need-based component) are sizable. However, long-run general equilibrium effects are 3-4 times smaller. Every additional dollar of government grants crowds out 20-30 cents of parental transfers. |
| Keywords: | education, financial aid, inter vivos transfers, credit constraints, equilibrium |
| JEL: | E24 I22 J23 J24 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:13/17&r=edu |
| By: | O'Donnell, Rebecca May Neal |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the relationship between changes in academic performance for pre-school age children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and teacher education and classroom staffing using data from the Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS). Strong positive relationships between changes in children’s standard scores on selected standardized math and reading tests are found when their teachers have bachelor’s or master’s degrees in special education, or bachelor’s degrees in general education. There is also evidence of relationships between classroom structure and change in student standard scores on standardized reading and math tests for children with ASD. |
| Keywords: | Public Economics, |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:umapmt:155283&r=edu |
| By: | Janger, Jürgen (Austrian Institute of Economic Research); Nowotny, Klaus (University of Salzburg) |
| Abstract: | Based on a unique survey, we conduct a stated choice experiment to examine the determinants of career choice in academia. Both early and later stage researchers value a balance between teaching and research, appropriate salaries, working with high-quality peers and good availability of external grants. Attractive academic jobs for early stage researchers feature in addition a combination of early independence and career (tenure) perspectives; later stage researchers favour jobs which make it easy to take up new lines of research, which pay according to a public scheme including a performance element and where research funding is provided by the university. Our findings have important implications for the structure of academic careers and for the organisational design of research universities. Furthermore, they shed light on the institutional determinants of the asymmetric mobility of highly talented scientists between the EU and the U. S. |
| Keywords: | academic careers; academic labour market; university organisation; brain drain |
| JEL: | I23 I25 I28 |
| Date: | 2013–08–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:sbgwpe:2013_004&r=edu |
| By: | Singh, K.M.; Meena, M.S.; Swanson, B.E. |
| Abstract: | In India, the first SAU was established in 1960 at Pantnagar in Uttar Pradesh. The SAUs were given autonomous status and direct funding from the state governments. They were autonomous organizations with state-wide responsibility for agricultural research, education and training or extension education. The establishment of the SAUs, based on a pattern similar to that of the land-grant universities in the United States, was a landmark in reorganizing and strengthening the agricultural education system in India. These universities became the branches of research under the ICAR and became the partners of the National Agricultural Research System (NARS). The green revolution, with its impressive social and economic impact, witnessed significant contributions from the SAUs, both in terms of trained, scientific work force and the generation of new technologies. However, most of the agricultural universities in India continue to be dominated by top-down, monolithic structures that follow a limited extension mandate. None of the post-Training-and-Visit (T&V) system extension reforms could revitalize it to meet the demands of a changing agricultural context. The profusion of uncensored information through mass media and cyber sources has long-term consequences of generating public distrust and alienation from agriculture. This is attributed to the lack of a proper mechanism for verifying the accuracy and viability of the information transmitted. As in most of the developing countries, transfer of technology remained largely in the domain of the State Department of Agriculture (DOA), and SAUs are mandated to serve only a limited extension role in technology dissemination activities. The paper tries to critically review the extension activities of the SAUs and their Directorates of extension Education in India. |
| Keywords: | Pluralistic extension system, State Agricultural Universities, Directorate of Extension Education, ICAR, India |
| JEL: | O15 O21 O33 O38 Q16 |
| Date: | 2013–08–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:49108&r=edu |
| By: | Filipe Campante (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | We provide evidence that economic circumstances are a key intermediating variable for understanding the relationship between schooling and political protest. Using the World Values Survey data, we find that individuals with higher levels of schooling, but whose income outcomes fall short of that predicted by a comprehensive set of their observable characteristics, in turn display a greater propensity to engage in protest activities. We argue that this evidence is consistent with the idea that a decrease in the opportunity cost of the use of human capital in labor markets encourages its use in political activities instead, and is unlikely to be explained solely by either a pure grievance effect or by self-selection. We then show separate evidence that these forces appear to matter too at the country level: Rising education levels coupled with macroeconomic weakness are associated with increased incumbent turnover, as well as subsequent pressures toward democratization. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed013:54&r=edu |
| By: | Ting Xu |
| Abstract: | Literature dealing with the history of Chinese printed books and printing is voluminous. Yet studies of how knowledge in general and utilitarian forms of knowledge in particular were generated, accumulated and circulated by printed books and their relationship with the long-term socio-economic transformation of China are rare. This paper aims to open up the subject by examining long-term trends in the production of manuscripts and books and focussing on connections between the generation and dissemination of useful knowledge in China and the production and circulation of printed books over the centuries and dynasties from circa 581 to 1840 compared to Europe. It connects trends in this indicator for knowledge formation and diffusion to economic growth, urbanisation, changes in higher forms of education, the rise of literacy, the development of printing technologies, and changes in perceptions of the natural world. It concludes that human capital formation in China probably proceeded at a slower rate, which is relevant for narratives of the .divergenceÿ between China and Europe. |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tth:wpaper:53&r=edu |
| By: | Maria Sironi; Nicola Barban; Roberto Impiacciatore |
| Abstract: | Compared to older cohorts, young adults in developed societies delay their transition to adulthood. Yet within cohorts, variations in timing and sequencing of events still remain. A major determinant of life course events is social class. This characteristic can influence the sequence of events in terms of socioeconomic inequalities through a different availability of opportunities for social mobility. Several studies show that in North America, a higher familial status tends to decrease the complexity of trajectories, while the opposite effect has been found in Southern Europe. This research examines the sequence of transitions, highlighting in a comparative perspective how life trajectories are influenced by parental social class in the United States and Italy. The main result of the analysis is that the effect of parental background is different across countries. In the United States, we find that a high status favors not only a higher education and an early entry in the labor market, but also a higher heterogeneity of states and the occurrence of new behaviors like single living and cohabitation. In Italy, the effect of social class is gender-specific. Among men, a higher social class tends to delay transitions more than lead towards modern behaviors. Among women, a higher social class either tends to facilitate the experience of a more modern and independent transition, or it generates a higher probability of postponing exit from the parental home, and then family formation, among those who completed their education and found a job. |
| Keywords: | transition to adulthood, social class, parental background, sequence analysis |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:don:donwpa:059&r=edu |
| By: | Pedro Garcia Duarte |
| Abstract: | After World War II economists acquired increasing importance in the American society in general. Moreover, the production of economics PhDs in the United States increased substantially and became a less concentrated industry. This period witnessed also the reformulation of the graduate education in economics in the US, informed by the several changes that were occurring in economics: its mathematization, the neoclassicism, the advancement of econometrics, the “Keynesian revolution”, and the ultimate Americanization of economics. The centrality that the MIT graduate program acquired in the postwar period makes it an important case study of the transformation of American economics more generally. Therefore, my aim here is to scrutinize the formative years of the PhD program, mostly the 1940s and 1950s. |
| Keywords: | MIT Economics Department, MIT PhD Program, Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow |
| JEL: | B20 B29 A23 |
| Date: | 2013–07–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spa:wpaper:2013wpecon8&r=edu |