nep-edu New Economics Papers
on Education
Issue of 2014‒12‒24
25 papers chosen by
João Carlos Correia Leitão
Universidade da Beira Interior

  1. Struggling Schools, Principals, and Teachers By Eric A. Hanushek
  2. Enrollment and degree completion in higher education without admission standards By Declercq, Koen; Verboven, Frank
  3. The impact of teacher characteristics on student performance: An analysis using hierarchical linear modelling By Paula Armstrong
  4. Teacher Pay and Student Performance: Evidence from the Gambian Hardship Allowance By Pugatch, Todd; Schroeder, Elizabeth
  5. Best Education Money Can Buy? Capitalization of School Quality in Finland By Mika Kortelainen; Tuukka Saarimaa; Oskari Harjunen
  6. Estimating the Returns to Schooling Using Cohort-Level Maternal Education as an Instrument By Winters, John V.
  7. Does Management Matter in Schools? By Bloom, Nicholas; Lemos, Renata; Sadun, Raffaella; Van Reenen, John
  8. Optimizing Public Expenditure Allocations between Secondary and Higher Education By Vijay P. Ojha; Joydeep Ghosh
  9. Ranking Teachers when Teacher Value-Added is Heterogeneous Across Students By Stacy, Brian
  10. Political Inclusivity and the Aspirations of Young Constituents: Identifying the Effects of a National Empowerment Policy By Stephen D. O'Connell
  11. Long-run effects on poverty of public expenditure in education By Marisa Hidalgo Hidalgo; Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe Kortajarene
  12. Gender & High Frequency vs. Low Frequency tasks in a context of Joint-Liability Incentives. By Marianne Bernatzky; José María Cabrera; Alejandro Cid
  13. Steering Dubai's Education Reform through Incentive and Accountability Drivers By Simon Thacker
  14. The Long-term Earnings Consequences of General vs. Specific Training of the Unemployed By Stenberg, Anders; Westerlund, Olle
  15. How Aid Helps Achieving MDGs in Africa: the Case of Primary Education By Yogo, Urbain Thierry; Mallaye, Douzounet
  16. Developing social-emotional skills for the labor market : the PRACTICE model By Guerra, Nancy; Modecki, Kathryn; Cunningham, Wendy
  17. More Schooling, Less Youth Crime? Learning from an Earthquake in Japan By Aoki, Yu
  18. When Does Education Matter? The Protective Effect of Education for Cohorts Graduating in Bad Times By Cutler, David M.; Huang, Wei; Lleras-Muney, Adriana
  19. An Empirical Analysis of Racial Segregation in Higher Education By Hinrichs, Peter
  20. Cross-border relationships of Central-European higher education institutions By Andrea Uszkai; Zsolt Dános
  21. Returns to Skills Around the World: Evidence From PIAAC By Eric A. Hanushek; Guido Schwerdt; Simon Wiederhold; Ludger Woessmann
  22. Implementation of a New School Supervision System in Poland By Grzegorz Mazurkiewicz; Bartłomiej Walczak; Marcin Jewdokimow
  23. Cannabis Use and its Effects on Health, Education and Labor Market Success By van Ours, J.C.; Williams, J.
  24. Skills mismatch and informal sector participation among educated immigrants: Evidence from South Africa By Alexandra Doyle; Amos C Peters; Asha Sundaram
  25. Academics’ Motivations and Depth and Breadth of Knowledge Transfer Activities By Roberto Iorio; Sandrine Labory; Francesco Rentocchini

  1. By: Eric A. Hanushek
    Abstract: This testimony before the Legislative Finance Committee of the New Mexico Legislature discusses the educational attainment of students in New Mexico and the research containing the development of human capital through education.
    Date: 2013–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hoo:wpaper:13113&r=edu
  2. By: Declercq, Koen; Verboven, Frank
    Abstract: Many countries organize their higher education system with limited or no ex ante admission standards. They instead rely more heavily on an ex post selection mechanism, based on the students' performance during higher education. We analyze how a system with ex post selection affects initial enrollment and final degree completion, using a rich dataset for Belgium (region of Flanders). We develop a dynamic discrete choice model of college/university and major choice, where the outcome of the enrollment decision is uncertain. Upon observing past performance, students may decide to continue, reorient to another major, or drop out. We find that ex post student selection is very strong: less than half of the students successfully complete their course work in the first year. Unsuccessful students mainly switch from university to college majors, or from college majors to drop-out. We use the estimates of our model to evaluate the effects of alternative, ex ante admission policies. We find that a suitably designed ex ante screening system (with moderate admission thresholds) can considerably increase degree completion in higher education. A discriminatory screening system for universities only, can raise total degree completion even more, though it implies a shift from university to college degrees.
    Keywords: admission policies; dynamic discrete choice; higher education
    JEL: I20
    Date: 2014–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10037&r=edu
  3. By: Paula Armstrong (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch)
    Abstract: This paper makes use of hierarchical linear modelling to investigate which teacher characteristics impact significantly on student performance. Using data from the SACMEQIII study of 2007, an interesting and potentially important finding is that younger teachers are better able to improve the mean mathematics performance of their students. Furthermore, younger teachers themselves performance better on subject tests than do their older counterparts. Changes in teacher education in the late 1990s and early 2000s may explain the differences in the performance of younger teachers relative to their older counterparts. However, further investigation is required to fully understand these differences.
    Keywords: Education, teachers, hierarchical linear modelling
    JEL: I2 I21
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers230&r=edu
  4. By: Pugatch, Todd (Oregon State University); Schroeder, Elizabeth (Oregon State University)
    Abstract: We evaluate the impact of the Gambian hardship allowance, which provides a salary premium of 30-40% to primary school teachers in remote locations, on student performance. A geographic discontinuity in the policy's implementation provides identifying variation. We find no effects of the hardship allowance on average student performance. These null average effects hide important heterogeneity, with learning gains for students at the top of the distribution and losses for those at the bottom. With over two dozen developing countries implementing similar policies to increase teacher compensation in rural schools, this study offers important evidence on their effectiveness.
    Keywords: teacher compensation, rural schools, Gambia, program evaluation, regression discontinuity
    JEL: I25 I28 J38 J45 O12 O15
    Date: 2014–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8621&r=edu
  5. By: Mika Kortelainen; Tuukka Saarimaa; Oskari Harjunen
    Abstract: By international comparison, Finnish pupil achievement is high and school achievement differences small. The Finnish education system is unusual also because there are no national testing programs and information on school quality measures is not publicly disclosed. Is school quality capitalized into house prices in this environment? Using a boundary discontinuity research design and data from Helsinki, we find that it is: a one standard deviation increase in average test scores increases prices by roughly 2.5 percent, which is comparable to findings from the U.K and the U.S. This price premium is related to pupils? socioeconomic background rather than school effectiveness.
    Keywords: Boundary discontinuity, house prices, school quality, spatial differencing
    JEL: R21 H75 I20 C21
    Date: 2014–12–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fer:wpaper:58&r=edu
  6. By: Winters, John V. (Oklahoma State University)
    Abstract: Formal education is widely thought to be a major determinant of individual earnings. This paper uses the American Community Survey to examine the effect of formal schooling on worker wages. Given the potential endogeneity of education decisions, I instrument for individual schooling using cohort-level mean maternal years of schooling from previous decennial censuses. The instrumental variables results suggest that schooling has a significant positive effect on worker wages. Specifically, an additional year or schooling is estimated to increase hourly wages by 10 percent for men and 12.6 percent for women.
    Keywords: human capital, education, returns to schooling, wages, maternal education
    JEL: J24 J31
    Date: 2014–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8616&r=edu
  7. By: Bloom, Nicholas (Stanford University); Lemos, Renata (University of Cambridge); Sadun, Raffaella (Harvard Business School); Van Reenen, John (CEP, London School of Economics)
    Abstract: We collect data on operations, targets and human resources management practices in over 1,800 schools educating 15-year-olds in eight countries. Overall, we show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational outcomes. The UK, Sweden, Canada and the US obtain the highest management scores closely followed by Germany, with a gap to Italy, Brazil and then finally India. We also show that autonomous government schools (i.e. government funded but with substantial independence like UK academies and US charters) have significantly higher management scores than regular government schools and private schools. Almost half of the difference between the management scores of autonomous government schools and regular government schools is accounted for by differences in leadership of the principal and better governance.
    Keywords: management, pupil achievement, autonomy, principals
    JEL: L2 M2 I2
    Date: 2014–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8620&r=edu
  8. By: Vijay P. Ojha (Centre for International Trade and Development,Jawaharlal Nehru University); Joydeep Ghosh (International Food Policy Research Institute)
    Abstract: With a view to define a balance in the allocation of public expenditure across secondary education and higher education, we compare, in this paper, the relative contributions of public expenditures on secondary and higher education to growth as well as equity, employing a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of India. Our policy simulations show that reducing allocations for secondary education and correspondingly increasing allocations of public education expenditure for higher education, produce monotonically decreasing growth and equity outcomes, if expansion of higher education does not foster technological progress. On the other hand, if higher education is well integrated with technological innovation, the former can become a powerful engine of inclusive growth. However, the growth and equity outcomes are not monotonically increasing with respect to expenditures on higher education when the latter is closely linked with technological innovation. Further, when higher education is a facilitator of technological innovation, the optimal allocation proportion for higher education in public educational spending is most likely to be within the range 40%-50%. Length: 38 pages
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ind:citdwp:14-02&r=edu
  9. By: Stacy, Brian
    Abstract: The typical measure used by researchers and school administrators to evaluate teachers is based on how the students' achievement increases after being exposed to the teacher, or based on the teacher's "value-added''. When teacher value-added is heterogeneous across her students, the typically used measure reflects differences in the average value-added the teacher provides. However, researchers, administrators, and parents may care not just about the average value-added, but also its dispersion. In this paper, I examine the robustness of typical teacher quality measures to alternate ranking systems factoring in the variance of value-added. Encouragingly, ranking systems factoring in the variance produce similar rankings as the ranking system based only on the mean. I also examine whether classroom characteristics and teacher experience affect a teacher's value-added variance and find that they explain little of the variation in value-added variances.
    Keywords: teacher value-added,heterogeneity,value-added variance,teacher quality
    JEL: I0 I20 I21 I28 J01 J08 J24 J44 J45
    Date: 2014–12–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:104743&r=edu
  10. By: Stephen D. O'Connell (CUNY Graduate School and University Center)
    Abstract: Using two dimensions of exogenous geographic variation in exposure to 1992 reforms that introduced seat quotas for women in local government in India, I find a one percentage-point increase in the school enrollment rate of young women for each additional year of exposure to women leaders. This effect is sizeable given a mean level of exposure of 11 years and pre-policy enrollment rates averaging 80 percent. The use of a border discontinuity identification strategy with nationally representative survey data greatly extends the generalizability of earlier studies. I also show that effects are non-linear in cumulative exposure, appearing only several years after the introduction of reservations. School quality and schooling infrastructure do not appear to be a potential mechanism for the effect to occur; the strongest evidence is that local women leaders changed the educational aspirations of young women and possibly enhanced the support of young women in school. To this end, I provide novel empirical evidence suggesting the media to be one channel for the “role-model effect†to be transmitted.
    Keywords: women, gender gap, education, human capital, political reservations, empowerment, development
    JEL: D13 H11 I21 I22 I24 I25 J16 O10 O12
    Date: 2014–11–13
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgc:wpaper:004&r=edu
  11. By: Marisa Hidalgo Hidalgo (Universidad de Alicante); Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe Kortajarene (Universidad de Alicante)
    Abstract: Household characteristics may have long-run effects on individual outcomes in adulthood. For instance, individuals who lived when young in households experiencing financial problems are more likely to be poor when adults. Public intervention in education is one of the most important means by which governments try to reduce these effects and to promote equality of opportunity. The objective of this paper is to check whether public expenditure in education has an effect in reducing the probability of being poor when adult, and to what extent. Our main finding is that public expenditure in primary education has a strong long-run effect on reducing incidence of poverty in adulthood. We also find that this effect is concentrated mainly among individuals who have parents with a low level of education.
    Keywords: public expenditure in education, poverty rate, intergenerational transmission of poverty.
    JEL: H52 I21 I23 J24 J31
    Date: 2014–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2014-06&r=edu
  12. By: Marianne Bernatzky; José María Cabrera; Alejandro Cid
    Abstract: We study the impact of high and low frequency incentives in a joint-liability framework on six academic outcomes of undergraduate students using a randomized field experiment. As recently documented in health literature, incentives to exercise are effective in developing healthy habits. Therefore, we design groups of three students and provide a premium to the homework’s grade if all the members of the group (three) meet some requirements. We investigate how the frequency of these take home tests affect the students study habits and thus, the academic outcomes. We find that there are no differences in the student’s educational outcomes between the high and low frequency groups. We also explore if male and female students respond differently to a joint-liability incentives scheme. We find that this treatment improves the accumulated grade average of male students, but not for females. This finding is in line with previous research on joint-liability and gender behavior, but now we present it in a new context. Finally, the paper outlines the main evaluation challenges associated with a field experiment in the classroom and provide some lessons in order to improve evaluation designs and to foster future randomized controlled trials in this area.
    Keywords: gender; field experiment; classroom incentives; evaluation; joint-liability incentives
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mnt:wpaper:1405&r=edu
  13. By: Simon Thacker
    Keywords: Teaching and Learning Access and Equity in Basic Education Education - Primary Education Education - Education For All Tertiary Education
    Date: 2014–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:20543&r=edu
  14. By: Stenberg, Anders (SOFI, Stockholm University); Westerlund, Olle (Umeå University)
    Abstract: Training programs for the unemployed typically involve teaching specific skills in demand amongst employers. In 1997, Swedish unemployed could also choose general training at the upper secondary school level. Despite the dominance of programs offering specific training, long-term relative earnings effects of general vs. specific training are theoretically ambiguous. Analyzing detailed administrative data 1990-2010, we find specific training associated with higher earnings in the short run, but that earnings converge over time. Results also indicate that individuals act on their comparative advantages. Long-run earnings advantages of general training are found for females with limited prior education and among metropolitan residents.
    Keywords: active labor market programs, adult education, vocational training
    JEL: I21 J62 J68
    Date: 2014–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8668&r=edu
  15. By: Yogo, Urbain Thierry; Mallaye, Douzounet
    Abstract: Since 2000, Official Development Assistance has played a crucial role in efforts related to the achievement of MDGs. This is especially the case in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) which is the world’s largest recipient of foreign aid. This paper assesses the effectiveness of aid and its efficient use in achieving universal primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of aid is assessed for a sample of 35 SSA countries over the decade 2000-2010. The results suggest that higher aid to education significantly increases primary completion rate. This result is robust to the use of various methods of estimation, the inclusion of instrument to account for the endogeneity of aid and the set of control variables included in regressions. In addition, this paper shows that there is strong heterogeneity in the efficient use of aid across countries in SSA.
    Keywords: Education Aid, Sub-Saharan Africa, Primary Completion Rate, Instrumental Variable
    JEL: O1 O11
    Date: 2014–10–31
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:60212&r=edu
  16. By: Guerra, Nancy; Modecki, Kathryn; Cunningham, Wendy
    Abstract: Although there is a general agreement in the literature of the importance of social-emotional skills for labor market success, there is little consensus on the specific skills that should be acquired or how and when to teach them. The psychology, economics, policy research, and program implementation literatures all touch on these issues, but they are not sufficiently integrated to provide policy direction. The objective of this paper is to provide a coherent framework and related policies and programs that bridge the psychology, economics, and education literature, specifically that related to skills employers value, non-cognitive skills that predict positive labor market outcomes, and skills targeted by psycho-educational prevention and intervention programs. The paper uses as its base a list of social-emotional skills that employers value, classifies these into eight subgroups (summarized by PRACTICE), then uses the psychology literature -- drawing from the concepts of psycho-social and neuro-biological readiness and age-appropriate contexts -- to map the age and context in which each skill subset is developed. The paper uses examples of successful interventions to illustrate the pedagogical process. The paper concludes that the social-emotional skills employers value can be effectively taught when aligned with the optimal stage for each skill development, middle childhood is the optimal stage for development of PRACTICE skills, and a broad international evidence base on effective program interventions at the right stage can guide policy makers to incorporate social-emotional learning into their school curriculum.
    Keywords: Educational Sciences,Primary Education,Education For All,Knowledge for Development,Teaching and Learning
    Date: 2014–11–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7123&r=edu
  17. By: Aoki, Yu (University of Aberdeen)
    Abstract: This paper aims to identify the causal effect of schooling on youth crime. To identify the causal effect, I use the policy interventions that occurred after the Kobe earthquake that hit Japan in 1995 as a natural experiment inducing exogenous variation in schooling. Based on a comparison of the arrest rates between municipalities exposed to similar degrees of earthquake damage but with and without the policy interventions, I find that a higher high school participation rate reduces juvenile arrest rates for violent crime but not for property crime. The estimates of social benefits show that it is less expensive to reach a target level of social benefits by improving schooling than by strengthening the police force.
    Keywords: schooling, youth crime, social externality
    JEL: H52 I28 K42
    Date: 2014–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8619&r=edu
  18. By: Cutler, David M.; Huang, Wei; Lleras-Muney, Adriana
    Abstract: Using Eurobarometer data, we document large variation across European countries in education gradients in income, self-reported health, life satisfaction, obesity, smoking and drinking. While this variation has been documented previously, the reasons why the effect of education on income, health and health behaviors varies is not well understood. We build on previous literature documenting that cohorts graduating in bad times have lower wages and poorer health for many years after graduation, compared to those graduating in good times. We investigate whether more educated individuals suffer smaller income and health losses as a result of poor labor market conditions upon labor market entry. We confirm that a higher unemployment rate at graduation is associated with lower income, lower life satisfaction, greater obesity, more smoking and drinking later in life. Further, education plays a protective role for these outcomes, especially when unemployment rates are high: the losses associated with poor labor market outcomes are substantially lower for more educated individuals. Variation in unemployment rates upon graduation can potentially explain a large fraction of the variance in gradients across different countries.
    Date: 2014–12–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hrv:faseco:13479095&r=edu
  19. By: Hinrichs, Peter (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland)
    Abstract: This descriptive paper documents how segregation between blacks and whites across colleges in the United States has evolved since the 1960s. It also explores potential channels through which changes are occurring, and it uses recent data to study the issue of segregation within colleges. The main findings are as follows: (1) White exposure to blacks has been rising since the 1960s, whereas black exposure to whites increased sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s and has fluctuated since then. Meanwhile, black-white dissimilarity and the Theil index fell sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s and have fallen more gradually since. (2) There has been regional convergence, although colleges in the South remain more segregated than those in any other region when measured by dissimilarity, by the Theil index, or by black exposure to whites. (3) A major channel for the decline in segregation is the declining share of blacks attending historically black colleges and universities. (4) Although there is segregation within universities, most segregation across major × university cells occurs across universities. )
    Keywords: segregation; higher education
    JEL: I23 I24 I28 J15
    Date: 2014–12–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1435&r=edu
  20. By: Andrea Uszkai; Zsolt Dános
    Abstract: This paper focuses on the Central-European (so called „centrope") region. This region was created by a co-operation project 10 years ago, and also functions today including Vienna and other Austrian provinces such as Lower Austria and Burgenland, the region of South-Moravia in the Czech Republic, the region of Bratislava and Trnava in Slovakia, Gyõr-Moson-Sopron and Vas counties in Hungary, and cities of Eisenstadt, St. Pölten, Brno, Bratislava and Trnava. The main objective of this study is to examine the implementing sectoral co-operation projects of R&D and tertiary education activities between the higher education institutions of the region and the intensity of these relations. Furthermore, we also concentrate on the depth of regional integration and networking from the point of view of the relationships in higher education, particularly the strength and the weaknesses of bilateral and multilateral relations, and also the absence of co-operation in different areas. Recent mobility surveys found that the rate of student mobility is low between the institutions in the region and there are no mutual exchange programs. The language barriers and the deficiency of the institutions' attractiveness were defined as the main reasons of the low mobility besides the lack of frequent relations. Although sectoral clusters were established inside the region with the membership of higher education institutions, the demand of regional co-operation in the institutions' strategies is unknown, and there are no available pieces of information about data sharing and long-term co-operation between the institutions in the functioning clusters (i.e. automotive industry). It must be examined what the main criteria are in the election of partners for current projects and how extended is the mutual partnership in the projects of the regional institutions. It is an essential analysis viewpoint whether there is a difference between higher education institutions with regard to the above depending on the location of the institution (including the relationships between the HEI's in own countries) and how this affects cross-border regional relationships. To sum up, the study intends to provide answers to how and in what areas does sectoral co-operation exist in the region among the higher education institutions and what is the rate of these projects comparing all projects of the institution, as well as to define the leading sectors of the co-operations.
    Keywords: university; Central-Europe; relationships; co-operation; project
    JEL: I23 R11
    Date: 2014–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa14p346&r=edu
  21. By: Eric A. Hanushek; Guido Schwerdt; Simon Wiederhold; Ludger Woessmann
    Abstract: This paper updates estimations of labor-market returns to human capital by re-examining traditional measures that rely exclusively on school attainment and put too much weight on early-career earnings by incorporating adult skills over full lifecycle earnings in 22 countries.
    Date: 2013–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hoo:wpaper:13114&r=edu
  22. By: Grzegorz Mazurkiewicz; Bartłomiej Walczak; Marcin Jewdokimow
    Abstract: This case study explores the strategies, processes and outcomes of an education reform in Poland which was introduced in 2009 and substantively changed the school inspection system. Its analysis looks in particular at the co-operation between the central and the local level throughout the implementation of the programme. In order to address the shortcomings of the prior inspection system, the reform combined internal and external evaluation in school supervision practice and put greater emphasis on collaboration among stakeholders. The results of the analysis show that the reform has had a great impact on the organisation of inspectorates, introducing modern principles such as teamwork and self-evaluation. Also, it affected the attitudes of important actors in the education system regarding the relevance of data to support internal and external school evaluation. The overall goals and aims of the reform gained the support of the various stakeholders. However, the implementation and communication processes were seen as deficient, especially in terms of a lack of capacity to roll out the reform as well as a lack of trust/disbelief that evaluation can be used for improvement, rather than the expected punitive purposes. Nevertheless, the reform achieved first structural steps towards building a culture of self-evaluation, which had thus far not been part of the Polish education system.<BR>L’étude de cas présentée ici examine l’amélioration des performances du système scolaire polonais au moyen d’un nouveau mécanisme d’évaluation introduit en 2009. Ce dernier s’appuie sur des structures conçues pour se substituer au dispositif d’inspection existant, ce qui rend la mise en oeuvre de la réforme difficile à plusieurs égards : aspects logistiques et structurels, changements d’allégeance et problèmes d’orgueil professionnel, ainsi que luttes de pouvoir entre les niveaux central/régional/local. Tandis que la majorité des enseignants et des directeurs touchés par la réforme soutenaient les objectifs généraux du programme, des doutes s’élevaient quant à la procédure de mise en oeuvre elle-même. Dans de telles configurations, un échange structuré entre les acteurs clefs faciliterait l’alignement des stratégies de mise en oeuvre avec les objectifs globaux de la réforme. La critique principale fustigeait un manque de capacités (moyens financiers ou connaissances) au niveau local pour la mise en oeuvre de la réforme, et un certain scepticisme quant à la possibilité d’utiliser l’évaluation pour susciter des améliorations sans recourir aux sanctions habituellement prévues. Néanmoins, la réforme a effectué les premières démarches vers le développement d'une culture de l'auto-évaluation, jusqu'à présent absente du système éducatif polonais.
    Date: 2014–12–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:eduaab:111-en&r=edu
  23. By: van Ours, J.C. (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research); Williams, J. (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research)
    Abstract: Cannabis is the most popular illegal drug. Its legal status is typically justified on the grounds that cannabis use has harmful consequences. Empirically investigating this issue has been a fertile topic for research in recent times. We provide an overview of this literature, focusing on studies which seek to establish the causal eect of cannabis use on health, education and labor market success. We conclude that there do not appear to be serious harmful health eects of moderate cannabis use. Nevertheless, there is evidence of reduced mental well-being for heavy users who are susceptible to mental health problems. While there is robust evidence that early cannabis use reduces educational attainment, there remains substantial uncertainty as to whether using cannabis has adverse labor market eects.
    Keywords: Cannabis use; Health; Education; Labor market
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiucen:4b6a953d-d141-4add-9cd2-d7d533dc4df5&r=edu
  24. By: Alexandra Doyle; Amos C Peters; Asha Sundaram (SALDRU and School of Economics, University of Cape Town)
    Abstract: Using South African census data, we show that immigrants with tertiary education from different origin country groups differ in their likelihood of obtaining a skilled job. Immigrants from advanced country groups outperform native internal migrants, while those from many African country groups underperform them. Immigrants with advanced degrees from certain country groups are also more likely to be employed in unskilled, informal sector jobs. Variation in outcomes across origin country groups is smaller at higher levels of education. We further explore characteristics of origin country groups correlated with immigrant outcomes. Our results suggest under-utilization of immigrant skills, which has particular implications for emerging economies grappling with skills shortages.
    JEL: F22 H52 J24 O24
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ldr:wpaper:137&r=edu
  25. By: Roberto Iorio (Department of Economics and Statistics (DISES), University of Salerno); Sandrine Labory (Department of Economics and Management, University of Ferrara); Francesco Rentocchini (University of Valencia)
    Abstract: The debate on the entrepreneurial university has raised questions about what motivates academics to engage with industry as well as what forms these knowledge transfer activities can take. This paper analyses the relationship between different forms of motivations, namely mission (following the entrepreneurial mission of the university), learning (access to wider knowledge base for research enhancement) and funding (obtaining financial resources), and the depth and breadth of knowledge transfer activities, measured by the combination of various formal and informal activities and the frequency of interactions. The study is focused on the case of Italian academics but it covers all disciplines. We find that the learning motivation appears to be less important in Italy while mission and funding prevail, probably due to the peculiarities of the Italian industrial system and to the necessity for Italian academics to look for external funding sources for their research.
    Keywords: University-industry relations; joint research; collaborative research; commercialisation; entrepreneurial university; motivation
    JEL: I23 O32
    Date: 2014–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cme:wpaper:1410&r=edu

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