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on Education |
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Issue of 2017‒02‒12
sixteen papers chosen by João Carlos Correia Leitão Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | Ana María Díaz- Ignacio Penagos; Ignacio Penagos |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the presence of peer effects in education. We investigate whether and how education attainment depends on the educational attainment of peers. We consider the role of different types of relationships among peers on education outcomes using a detailed network structure among first-year economics students. We find that there are strong peer effects in education, but peers tend to be influential only if they interact frequently. This result suggest that the mechanism behind is that students teach their peers specific knowledge rather than general knowledge that they possess. We also find that peers can have a positive influence if they belong to the highest tercile of the distribution of the university entrance exam. While the influence can be negative if peers belong to the lowest decile of the distribution. This evidence suggest that the bad apple model and the shining light model can coexist. |
| Keywords: | Peer effects, social network formation, academic achievement, homophily |
| JEL: | D85 I21 I23 I26 J24 |
| Date: | 2016–11–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000416:015306&r=edu |
| By: | Ana María Díaz - Ignacio Penagos; Ignacio Penagos |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the presence of peer effects in education. We investigate whether and how education attainment depends on the educational attainment of peers. We consider the role of different types of relationships among peers on education outcomes using a detailed network structure among first-year economics students. We find that there are strong peer effects in education, but peers tend to be influential only if they interact frequently. This result suggest that the mechanism behind is that students teach their peers specific knowledge rather than general knowledge that they possess. We also find that peers can have a positive influence if they belong to the highest tercile of the distribution of the university entrance exam. While the influence can be negative if peers belong to the lowest decile of the distribution. This evidence suggest that the bad apple model and the shining light model can coexist. |
| Keywords: | Peer effects, social network formation, academic achievement, homophily |
| JEL: | D85 I21 I23 I26 J24 |
| Date: | 2016–11–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000108:015304&r=edu |
| By: | Steven Levitt; John List; Sally Sadoff |
| Abstract: | We test the effect of performance-based incentives on educational achievement in a low-performing school district using a randomized field experiment. High school freshmen were provided monthly financial incentives for meeting an achievement standard based on multiple measures of performance including attendance, behavior, grades and standardized test scores. Within the design, we compare the effectiveness of varying the recipient of the reward (students or parents) and the incentive structure (fixed rate or lottery). While the overall effects of the incentives are modest, the program has a large and significant impact among students on the threshold of meeting the achievement standard. These students continue to outperform their control group peers a year after the financial incentives end. However, the program effects fade in longer term follow up, highlighting the importance of longer term tracking of incentive programs. |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:framed:00585&r=edu |
| By: | Benedetto Lepori (Universita della Svizzera italiana); Aldo Geuna (University of Turin - Department of Economics S. Cognetti de Martiis); Valerio Veglio (Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca - Department of Economics, Quantitative Methods and Business Strategies (DEMS)) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to develop a theory-based typology of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) based on three dimensions of differentiation, i.e. their activity profile (education vs. research), the subject scope (generalist vs. specialist) and regulatory characteristics which constrain previous two. We examine the financial environment of HEIs as a possible selection mechanism. Particular attention is devoted to the identification of European Research Universities By testing this typology on a large sample of European HEIs, we show systematic differences between types in their activity profile and in the level of funding, therefore providing evidence that types are associated with different market positioning. We identify a small group of research universities, characterized by a high level of research volume and intensity and by a volume of funding far higher than all other HEIs in the sample, suggesting that their emergence is critically linked to the concentration of resources. |
| Keywords: | Academic Research, Higher Education Institutions, Universities, Ranking, Typology, Resource Allocation, Concentration of Resources |
| JEL: | I23 I28 H52 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sru:ssewps:2017-01&r=edu |
| By: | Inmaculada García-Mainar (University of Zaragoza); Víctor M. Montuenga-Gómez (University of Zaragoza) |
| Abstract: | Over-education may arise from the voluntary decisions of individuals to acquire more qualifications than those required in the workplace. In these cases, the mismatch may have a signalling role that allows workers to compensate for the lack of certain other skills, or to gain access to the labour market. The aim of this paper is to analyse the signalling role of over-education in Spain, a country characterised by a strongly-segmented labour market with high unemployment levels, and a large number of over-educated individuals. Using micro data for a representative sample of Spanish workers, we use three different methods to test the signalling value of over-education. The results obtained provide evidence that educational mismatch plays a clear signalling role. |
| Keywords: | human capital, educational mismatch, rate of return, signalling |
| JEL: | D82 I26 J24 J28 J62 |
| Date: | 2017–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zar:wpaper:dt2017-03&r=edu |
| By: | Carlos Cortinhas (Department of Economics, University of Exeter) |
| Abstract: | The link between formative assessment and student performance is not entirely clear in the existing literature with some previous studies showing contradicting results. Although the debate is very old (since mid-1800s), previous research is almost exclusively based on elementary and secondary school students. This paper attempts to add to the existing literature by focusing on data from a large scale experiment (a class of 578 UK first year undergraduate students enrolled on Introduction to Statistics) to determine whether online, formative (non-compulsory) homework helps or hinders students. The results suggest that completing formative assessment tasks contributes to higher grades but only for good students. The result is robust to a variety of specifications and after controlling for a large number of student characteristics (including nationality, gender, ethnicity, whether a student has completed a Maths or Economics A-Level in Secondary School, amongst others) and the level of student ability/effort. This study shows, therefore, that formative homework might contribute to amplifying inequalities amongst students and that other strategies are needed to close the gap between the top and bottom performing students. |
| Keywords: | homework, online learning, formative assessment. |
| JEL: | C21 I21 I24 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exe:wpaper:1701&r=edu |
| By: | Parey, Matthias |
| Abstract: | How to best prepare non-college bound youth for the labor market? Different approaches compete in this field, including firm-based apprenticeships, full-time vocational schooling, and on-the-job learning. Little is known about how effective these methods are, and comparisons of means are uninformative due to the selection of individuals into different streams. In this paper, we exploit the idea that variation in apprenticeship availability affects the opportunities individuals have when they grow up. We present a small open economy model in which price shocks affect the local number of apprentices, without a differential effect on factor rewards; this motivates an instrumental variable strategy to compare labor market outcomes between labor types, which is implemented exploiting differences in training availability. We document how variation in vacancies for apprenticeships affects educational choice. We show that at the margin, individuals substitute between apprenticeship training and full-time school-based vocational training. We exploit this variation to study how this formation period affects later labor market outcomes at ages 23 to 26. Our results show that firm-based apprenticeship training leads to substantially lower unemployment rates; investigating this pattern over time, the evidence indicates that former apprentices have a transitory advantage which fades out over time. We do not find significant differences in wages. This suggests that these alternatives confer similar overall levels of productivity, and that apprenticeship training improves the early labor market attachment relative to vocational schooling. We investigate the responsiveness to negative shocks in an experiment based on firm closures. Our results are found to be robust in a number of specification checks, and we investigate the validity of our functional form in a semiparametric analysis. |
| JEL: | I21 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145655&r=edu |
| By: | Gautam, Tej K.; Paudel, Krishna P.; Guidry, Kurt M. |
| Abstract: | We conducted survey to collect information from Louisiana farmers to understand their concerns related to irrigation water quality and availability of sufficient water for crop irrigation. We used logistic models to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for irrigation water during critical crop growing periods. Variables affecting the participation in WTP are income, land holding size, risk aversion, and education. Our estimated results show that farmers with higher education are more likely to pay for irrigation water compared to farmers with high school and college degree. Age of the farmers, farm revenue, size of the rented land have negative effect on willingness to pay for irrigation water. The sizes of the owned land and risk aversion factor have positive effect on willingness to pay. |
| Keywords: | willingness to pay/Willingness to accept, water trading, irrigation technology, logit, soybean, Production Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q12, Q25, |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:saea17:252821&r=edu |
| By: | Findeisen, Sebastian; Dauth, Wolfgang; Lee, Tim |
| Abstract: | We study and compare the importance of human capital acquired at different stages of the life-cycle. We exploit Germany’s unique reunification episode and the sudden restructuring of East Germany’s labor market institutions and education system. We show graphical evidence that earnings, employment and wages for each East German birth cohort—scaled by the same outcomes for West German cohorts—change linearly with age at reunification. These linear exposure effects display structural breaks, i.e., changes in slope, around the ages 18 and 30 at reunification for both genders, and age 35 for females: there are significant gender differences. Exposure effects are by far the strongest for males between ages 20 and 30, where relative earnings decline at a rate of 2% per year for older cohorts. Around 40% of this effect is explained by higher college graduation rates for younger cohorts, while the remaining 60% underscores the impor- tance and long lasting impact of early career effects. For females, earnings differences are almost completely explained by employment. We document reverse exposure effects for East German women between age 5 and 30 at reunification: employment and labor force participation rates increase linearly with each additional year spent in the socialist East. This trend is reversed after age 30, with older cohort’s earnings and employment declining with each additional year spent in the East. |
| JEL: | J30 J40 J24 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145887&r=edu |
| By: | Tartaruga, Iván G. Peyré |
| Abstract: | Nowadays, the process of innovation has become an important agent to social and economic development of regions and countries. Thus, within the context of the “heterodox paradigm of economic geography”, the region-specific capacities are fundamental for such activities of development, which one has been more and more appraised: the knowledge from the higher education institutions (HEIs). This article analyses the role of HEIs in general and the situation in the State of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) in particular, in the period of 2000 through 2010, by means of the postgraduate structure. The paper ends with some considerations about a regional agenda of research to the municipalities of Pelotas and Rio Grande in the sense of their territorial development within the heterodox perspective. The results highlight the strength of postgraduate structure of the region and, consequently, higher education in general, also stressing the State potentialities for scientific, technological and of innovative progress. |
| Keywords: | higher education institutions; postgraduate; science, technology and innovation (S&T&I); territorial development; Pelotas; Rio Grande |
| JEL: | I23 O33 |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:76454&r=edu |
| By: | Bó, Inácio Guerberoff Lanari; Hakimov, Rustamdjan |
| Abstract: | We introduce a new mechanism for matching students to schools or universities, denoted Iterative Deferred Acceptance Mechanism (IDAM), inspired by procedures currently being used to match millions of students to public universities in Brazil and China. Unlike most options available in the literature, IDAM is not a direct mechanism. Instead of requesting from each student a full preference over all colleges, the student is instead repeatedly asked to choose one college among those which would accept her given the current set of students choosing that college. Although the induced sequential game has no dominant strategy, when students simply choose the most preferred college in each period (denoted the straightforward strategy), the matching that is produced is the Student Optimal Stable Matching. Moreover, under imperfect information, students following the straightforward strategy is an Ordinal Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium. Based on data from 2016, we also provide evidence that, due to shortcomings which are absent in the modified version that we propose, the currently used mechanism in Brazil fails to assist the students with reliable information about the universities that they are able to attend, and are subject to manipulation via cutoffs, a new type of strategic behavior that is introduced by this family of iterative mechanisms and observed in the field. |
| Keywords: | Market Design,Matching,Iterative Mechanisms,College Admissions |
| JEL: | C78 C92 D63 D78 D82 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2016212&r=edu |
| By: | Alexander Cappelen; John List; Anya Samek; Bertil Tungodden |
| Abstract: | We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on social preferences of children. We compare children who, at 3-4 years old, were randomized into either a full-time preschool, a parenting program with incentives, or to a control group. We returned to the same children when they reach 7-8 years old a conducted a series of incentivized experiments to elicit there social preferences. We find that early childhood education has a strong causal impact on social preferences several years after the intervention: attending preschool makes children more egalitarian in their fairness view and the parenting program enhances the importance children place on efficiency relative to fairness. Our findings highlight the importance of taking a broad perspective when designing and evaluating early childhood education programs, and provide evidence how differences in institutional exposure may contribute to explaining heterogeneity in social preferences in society. |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:framed:00584&r=edu |
| By: | Naihobe Gonzalez |
| Abstract: | In 2013, students who scored high enough on the PSAT received a message about their potential to succeed in Advanced Placement coursework. Students who received the message were 49 percentage points more likely to participate in AP classes, but only if they were prompted by a survey to look for the message. |
| Keywords: | Advanced Placement, PSAT, behavioral insights, regression discontinuity |
| JEL: | I |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:307d565f1bf14eb88080718473ec884e&r=edu |
| By: | Choudhary, Akanksha; Singh, Ashish |
| Abstract: | A few studies have related daughters’ education to their fathers in India but there is little to no evidence when it comes to intergenerational relation between daughters and mothers’ education. Using India Human Development Survey 2011-12, we investigate intergenerational educational mobility for women (15-49 years) (vis-à-vis their mothers). We have used mobility matrices/measures for the estimation. Findings indicate that intergenerational educational mobility at the all-India level is about 0.69, that is, 69% of the women acquire a level of education different from their mothers. Of the overall mobility, about 80% is contributed by upwards mobility whereas the rest is downwards. Mobility is greater in urban areas and is highest among the socially advantaged “Others” (or upper) caste group. Also, the upwards component is substantially lower for socially disadvantaged groups compared to Others. Further, there are large inter-regional variations, with situation being worst in the central and eastern regions which comprise of the underdeveloped states of India. Moreover, mobility (overall and upwards) increases consistently as one move up the income distribution. Furthermore, income is not able to neutralize the caste based gaps in overall mobility as overall mobility among the Others of the poorest income group is more than the overall mobility among Scheduled Castes/Tribes of the richest income group. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational educational mobility � Educational mobility decomposition � Educational endowment trap � Mothers’ education � Females’ education � India |
| JEL: | I24 I25 I30 |
| Date: | 2016–10–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:76442&r=edu |
| By: | DECERF, Benoit (Universit e de Namur); VAN DER LINDEN, Martin (Vanderbilt University) |
| Abstract: | We introduce a new criterion to compare the properties of mechanisms when the solution concept used induces multiple solutions. Our criterion generalizes previous approaches in the literature. We use our criterion to compare the stability of constrained versions of the Boston (BOS) and deferred acceptance (DA) school choice mechanisms in which students can only rank a subset of the schools they could potentially access. When students play a Nash equilibrium, we show that there is a stability cost to increasing the number of schools students can rank in DA. On the other hand, when students only play undominated strategies, increasing the number of schools students can rank increases stability. We find sim- ilar results for BOS. We also compare BOS and DA. Whatever the number of schools students can rank, we find that BOS is more stable than DA in Nash equilibrium, but less stable in undominated strategies. |
| Keywords: | Multiple solutions, School choice, Stability, Boston mecha- nism, Deferred acceptance mechanism, Nash equilibrium, Undominated strategy |
| JEL: | C78 D47 D82 I |
| Date: | 2016–10–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cor:louvco:2016033&r=edu |
| By: | Jansen, Marcel; García-Pérez, J. Ignacio; Bentolila, Samuel |
| Abstract: | Long-term unemployment reached unprecedented levels in Spain in the wake of the Great Recession and it still affects around 57% of the unemployed. We document the sources that contributed to the rise in long-term unemployment and analyze its persistence using state-ofthe- art duration models. We find pervasive evidence of negative duration dependence, while personal characteristics such as mature age, lack of experience, and entitlement to unemployment benefits are key to understand the cross-sectional differences in the incidence of long-term unemployment. The negative impact of low levels of skills and education is muted by the large share of temporary contracts, but once we restrict attention to employment spells lasting at least one month these factors also contribute to a higher risk of long-term unemployment. Surprisingly, workers from the construction sector do not fare worse than similar workers from other sectors. Finally, self-reported reservation wages are found to respond strongly to the cycle, but much less to individual unemployment duration. In view of these findings, we argue that active labour market policies should play a more prominent role in the fight against long-term unemployment while early activation should be used to curb inflows. |
| Keywords: | Spain; survival probability; duration model; great recession; Long-term unemployment |
| JEL: | C41 J65 J64 J63 |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:werepe:24122&r=edu |