nep-edu New Economics Papers
on Education
Issue of 2021‒11‒15
six papers chosen by
Nádia Simões
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

  1. Economic education at the expense of indoctrination? Evidence from Germany By Kaiser, Tim; Oberrauch, Luis
  2. Prospering through Prospera: CCT Impacts on Educational Attainment and Achievement in Mexico By Behrman, J.; Parker, S.; Todd, P.; Zhang, W.
  3. Wage Effects of Educational Mismatch According to Workers’ Origin: The Role of Demographics and Firm Characteristics By Jacobs, Valentine; Rycx, François; Volral, Mélanie
  4. Does the geographic clustering of universities promote their scientific research performance? Evidence from China By Chu, Shuai; Wu, Mengfei
  5. Gender-Gap in Learning Outcomes under Rainfall Shocks: The Role of Gender Norms By Aparajita Dasgupta; Anahita Karandikar
  6. Non-College Occupations, Workplace Routinization, and the Gender Gap in College Enrollment By Chuan, A.; Zhang, W.

  1. By: Kaiser, Tim; Oberrauch, Luis
    Abstract: We study the impact of a recent curriculum reform introducing mandatory economic education in higher-track secondary schools in Southwest Germany. The curriculum reform provides the opportunity to leverage the exogenous variation in exposure to economic education relative to the previous cohort not affected by the reform. One year after exposure to the mandate, we observe positive treatment effects on test scores measuring cognitive elements of economic competence only for students with high test scores at baseline. Two years after exposure to the mandate, we find positive treatment effects on test scores across the entire distribution, as well as socio-emotional skills relevant to financial decision making while we do not observe effects on self-reported financial behaviors. At the same time, we find no changes in social preferences and normative attitudes that could give rise to concerns of indoctrination effects regarding students’ views on profit maximization and the market mechanism.
    Keywords: Economic education,financial literacy,impact evaluation,social preferences,indoctrination,financial behaviors
    JEL: A21 G53 I21
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:245801&r=
  2. By: Behrman, J.; Parker, S.; Todd, P.; Zhang, W.
    Abstract: This paper develops and estimates a dynamic model of student enrollment, school choice, academic achievement and grade progression to evaluate the impacts of Mexico’s conditional cash transfer program Prospera on educational outcomes over grades 4-9. Academic achievement is measured by nationwide standardized test scores in mathematics and Spanish. Enrollment decisions are the outcomes of sequential decisions at each age from individuals’ feasible choice sets, determined by the types of schools locally available and local-labor-market opportunities. The achievement production function has a value-added structure. Model parameters are estimated by maximum likelihood using nationwide administrative test-score data (the ENCEL data) combined with survey data from students and parents, census labor-market data, and geo-coded school-location data. The estimation approach controls for selective school enrollment in different types of schools, grade retention and unobserved heterogeneity. The results show that the Prospera program increases school enrollment and academic achievement for program beneficiaries in lower-secondary school grades (grades 7-9). The average test-score impacts are 0.09-0.13 standard deviations in mathematics and 0.03-0.05 standard deviations in Spanish. Students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds experience the largest impacts. The availability of telesecondary distance-learning schools is shown to be an important determinant of the Prospera program’s impacts on educational outcomes.
    Date: 2021–11–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2178&r=
  3. By: Jacobs, Valentine; Rycx, François; Volral, Mélanie
    Abstract: This paper analyses the wage effects of educational mismatch by workers’ origin using a sizeable, detailed matched employer-employee dataset for Belgium. Relying on a fine-grained approach to measuring educational mismatch, the results show that over-educated workers, regardless of their origin, suffer a wage penalty compared to their well-matched former classmates. However, the magnitude of this wage penalty is found to vary considerably depending on workers’ origin. In addition, the estimates show that origin-based differences in over-education wage penalties significantly depend on both demographics (workers’ region of birth, education, and gender) and employer characteristics (firm size and collective bargaining).
    Keywords: Immigrants,educational mismatch,wage gap,linked employer-employee data
    JEL: I24 I26 J15 J24 J31
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:966&r=
  4. By: Chu, Shuai; Wu, Mengfei
    Abstract: The fundamental purpose of university geographic clustering is to gather resources through "agglomeration" to improve the performance of higher education and scientific research. However, it has been debated whether university clusters can achieve the latter goal. With the help of the “quasi-experiment” of Chinese "University Towns" project in the 1990s, this study determines the impact of university clusters on scientific research performance. Panel data of 2000 colleges and universities from 1993 to 2017 in the compilation of scientific and technical statistics of Chinese higher education and time-varying difference in differences method are used. The results show that the cluster of colleges and universities have a significant negative impact on the scientific research performance due to technological dis-proximity and rising commuting costs. And the clustering effect is related to the number of participating schools and the level of the university. Therefore, university clustering cannot effectively promote the performance of scientific research and unable to bring agglomeration economies.
    Keywords: University cluster,Economies of agglomeration,Scientific research performance,Time-varying difference in differences method
    JEL: I23 O38 O53
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:963&r=
  5. By: Aparajita Dasgupta (Ashoka University); Anahita Karandikar (J-PAL, South Asia)
    Abstract: There is mixed evidence in the literature on the effect of rainfall shocks on educational outcomes for children in rural areas, with a limited understanding of how the gender-gap in education evolves in the face of such a shock. We posit that the vulnerability to climatic shocks can vary by the gender institutions of the setting which can have a bearing on the gender-gap in educational outcomes. On one hand, a negative productivity shock can lead to a disproportionate reduction in human capital outcomes for girls, as investments for girls may be more sensitive to income constraints. On the other hand, as the opportunity cost of schooling goes down in the face of a negative shock, it can translate into gains in educational outcomes, which are higher for female children in areas that favour female labour force participation. Leveraging the variation in cropping patterns that guide norms around female labor force participation (FLFP) in rural India, we examine how exposure to contemporaneous and past rainfall shocks a effects learning outcomes for girls and boys. We find the widest gaps in outcomes in positive versus negative rainfall shock years for female children in regions that favour FLFP. We provide suggestive evidence that this is driven by increased participation in paid employment and full time domestic work during a positive rainfall shock.
    Keywords: Female labour force participation, rainfall, education, India
    Date: 2021–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ash:wpaper:70&r=
  6. By: Chuan, A.; Zhang, W.
    Abstract: Women used to lag behind men in college enrollment but now exceed them. We argue that changes in non-college job prospects contributed to these trends. We first document that routine-biased technical change disproportionately displaced non-college occupations held by women. We next employ a shift-share instrument for the impact of routinization to show that declining non-college job prospects for women increased female enrollment. Results show that a one percentage point decline in the share of routine task intensive jobs leads to a 0.6 percentage point rise in female college enrollment, while the effect for male enrollment is directionally smaller and insignificant. We next embed this instrumental variation into a dynamic model that links education and occupation choices. The model finds that routinization decreased returns to non-college occupations for women, leading them to shift to cognitive work and increasing their college premium. In contrast, non-college occupations for men were less susceptible to routinization. Altogether, our model estimates that workplace routinization accounted for 63% of the growth in female enrollment and 23% of the change in male enrollment between 1980 to 2000.
    Keywords: human capital, college enrollment, gender, occupations, automation
    JEL: I23 I24 I26 J16 J24 I26
    Date: 2021–11–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2177&r=

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