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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Claudio, MATTALIA |
| Abstract: | This paper considers a multi-sectoral endogenous growth model, that reproduces the essental aspects of an ‘ICT-based economy’, in which a central role is played by human capital accumulation. Indeed, households also invest in human capital through schooling, and this turns out to be the thrue engine of growth. Furthermore, this model displays no scale effect and the stimulations allow to get interesting results concerning the link between market power and growth, the presence of ‘imbalance effects’ and the consequences of different types of subsidies |
| Keywords: | Information technology; endogenous growth; imbalance effect |
| JEL: | E22 O40 C63 |
| Date: | 2005–09–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvec:2005046&r=hrm |
| By: | Ingrid Verheul; Andre van Stel; Roy Thurik |
| Abstract: | This study aims at explaining female and male entrepreneurship across countries. Explanatory variables are derived from three streams of literature, including the literature on the determinants of entrepreneurship, the literature on female labor force participation, and that on female entrepreneurship. To test the hypotheses use is made of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data, including total entrepreneurial activity rates for both women and men for 2002, as well as a range of prospective determinants derived from standardized national statistics. We find that female and male entrepreneurship are largely influenced by the same factors in the same direction. A remarkable exception is life satisfaction for which we find a positive impact on female entrepreneurship and no impact on male entrepreneurship. The paper pays explicit attention to the methodological aspects of investigating the determinants of female and male entrepreneurship. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship, gender, determinants of entrepreneurship |
| JEL: | M13 H10 J16 J23 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:egpdis:2005-34&r=hrm |
| By: | Maurice Schiff (The World Bank and IZA) |
| Abstract: | Based on static partial equilibrium analysis, the "new brain drain" literature argues that, by raising the return to education, a brain drain generates a brain gain that is, under certain conditions, larger than the brain drain itself, and that such a net brain gain results in an increase in welfare and growth due to education's positive externalities. This paper argues that these claims are exaggerated. In the static case, and based on both partial and general equilibrium considerations, the paper shows that (1) the size of the brain gain is smaller than suggested in that literature; (2) the impact on welfare and growth is smaller as well (for any brain gain size); (3) a positive brain gain is likely to result in a smaller, possibly negative, human capital gain; (4) an increase in the stock of human capital may have a negative impact on welfare and growth; and (5) in a dynamic framework, the paper shows that the steady-state brain gain is equal to the brain drain so that a 'beneficial brain drain' cannot take place, and a net brain loss is likely during the transition. |
| Keywords: | International economics |
| Date: | 2005–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3708&r=hrm |
| By: | Hong Tan (The World Bank); Gladys Lopez Acevedo (The World Bank) |
| Abstract: | While there have been numerous impact evaluations of unemployed individuals participating in retraining programs or in programs to foster self-employment, impact evaluations of enterprises benefiting from training programs for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are rare. The authors reevaluate the impact of the largest SME program in Mexico, the Comprehensive Quality and Modernization Program (CIMO). They show that compared to the control group, CIMO firms increased investments in worker training, had higher rates of capacity utilization, and were more likely to adopt quality practices. The evidence also suggests that these improved intermediate outcomes were associated with increased productivity growth among CIMO participants, impacts that were especially strong throughout the 1991-93 period. However, the productivity impacts of CIMO are not apparent in the 1993-95 period. |
| Keywords: | Industry, Private sector development, Labor and employment, Education |
| Date: | 2005–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3760&r=hrm |
| By: | Aaditya Mattoo (The World Bank); Gnanaraj Chellaraj (The World Bank); Keith E. Maskus (University of Colorado at Boulder) |
| Abstract: | The impact of international students and skilled immigration in the United States on innovative activity is estimated using a model of idea generation. In the main specification a system of three equations is estimated, where dependent variables are total patent applications, patents awarded to U.S. universities, and patents awarded to other U.S. entities, each scaled by the domestic labor force. Results indicate that both international graduate students and skilled immigrants have a significant and positive impact on future patent applications, as well as on future patents awarded to university and nonuniversity institutions. The central estimates suggest that a 10 percent increase in the number of foreign graduate students would raise patent applications by 4.7 percent, university patent grants by 5.3 percent, and nonuniversity patent grants by 6.7 percent. Thus, reductions in foreign graduate students from visa restrictions could significantly reduce U.S. innovative activity. Increases in skilled immigration also have a positive, but smaller, impact on patenting. |
| Keywords: | International economics |
| Date: | 2005–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3588&r=hrm |
| By: | Dean Yang (University of Michigan) |
| Abstract: | Millions of households in developing countries receive financial support from family members working overseas. How do the economic prospects of overseas migrants affect origin-household investments-in particular, in child human capital and household enterprises? Yang examines Philippine households' responses to overseas members' economic shocks. Overseas Filipinos work in dozens of foreign countries which experienced sudden (and heterogeneous) changes in exchange rates due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Appreciation of a migrant's currency against the Philippine peso leads to increases in household remittances received from overseas. The estimated elasticity of Philippine peso remittances with respect to the Philippine/foreign exchange rate is 0.60. In addition, these positive income shocks lead to enhanced human capital accumulation and entrepreneurship in origin households. Favorable migrant shocks lead to greater child schooling, reduced child labor, and increased educational expenditure in origin households. More favorable exchange rate shocks also raise hours worked in self-employment and lead to greater entry into relatively capital-intensive enterprises by migrants' origin households. |
| Keywords: | International economics |
| Date: | 2005–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3578&r=hrm |
| By: | Eli Berman (University of California, San Diego and National Bureau of Economic Research); Rohini Somanathan (University of Michigan and Indian Statistical Institute); Hong W. Tan (The World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Most high and middle-income countries showed symptoms of skill-biased technological change in the 1980s. India-a low income country-did not, perhaps because India's traditionally controlled economy may have limited the transfer of technologies from abroad. However the economy underwent a sharp reform and a manufacturing boom in the 1990s, raising the possibility that technology absorption may have accelerated during the past decade. The authors investigate the hypothesis that skill-biased technological change did in fact arrive in India in the 1990s using panel data disaggregated by industry and state from the Annual Survey of Industry. These data confirm that while the 1980s were a period of falling skills demand, the 1990s showed generally rising demand for skills, with variation across states. They find that increased output and capital-skill complementarity appear to be the best explanations of skill upgrading in the 1990s. Skill upgrading did not occur in the same set of industries in India as it did in other countries, suggesting that increased demand for skills in Indian manufacturing is not due to the international diffusion of recent vintages of skill-biased technologies. |
| Keywords: | Private sector development |
| Date: | 2005–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3761&r=hrm |
| By: | Paula Inés Giovagnoli (Universidad Nacional de la Plata); Ariel Fiszbein (The World Bank); Harry Anthony Patrinos (The World Bank) |
| Abstract: | The authors estimate returns to schooling in urban Argentina for a 10-year period. In addition to comparable earnings functions, they also estimate the returns using quantile regression analysis to detect differences in the returns across the distribution. Over time, men in higher quantiles have higher returns to schooling compared with those in the lower quantiles. For women, returns are highest at the lowest quantile. The returns to education increased during the past decade. The authors do not rule out that increased demand for skills is driving the increasing returns over the decade. |
| Keywords: | Labor and employment, Education |
| Date: | 2005–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3715&r=hrm |
| By: | Maria Paula Savanti (Harvard University); Harry Anthony Patrinos (The World Bank) |
| Abstract: | There has not been much change in the premium to primary education, while the returns to secondary education increased, but by less than the premium to university. The returns to incomplete university also increased significantly. There is a signal that there might be credentialism at the tertiary level, but 15 years of schooling also represents a significant threshold. The returns to schooling are higher in the private sector. There is little evidence of screening or credentialism driving the returns to schooling, which increased significantly in Argentina from 1992 to 2002. |
| Keywords: | Labor and employment, Education |
| Date: | 2005–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3714&r=hrm |
| By: | Vincent, VANDENBERGHE (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Should access to higher education remain ‘free’ ? Theoretical answers to this question are at least twofold. First, public higher education is said to be regressive as a priviliged minority profits from extra human capital, and all the private benefits it generates, while the general public foots the bill. A frequent reply is that higher education students enjoying ‘free’ access are implicitly borrowing public money that they pay back when entering the labour market, via progressive income taxes. Using a simple lifecycle framework this paper produces realistic estimates of how much graduates are likely to ‘reimburse” society via income tax. Using Belgian data on higher education public expenditure and income taxes paid by both graduates and non-graduates over their lifetime, we show that the implicit reimbursement rate ranges from 37% to 95%. It is much higher for bachelors than master graduates, and for males |
| Keywords: | Higher Education Finance; Regressive Transfers; Implicit Loans |
| JEL: | I28 H52 |
| Date: | 2005–06–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvec:2005031&r=hrm |
| By: | Marco Francesconi (Department of Economics, University of Essex); Stephen P. Jenkins (Institute for Social and Economic Research); Thomas Siedler (Institute for Social and Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | We analyse the impact on schooling outcomes of growing up in a family headed by a single mother. Growing up in a non-intact family in Germany is associated with worse outcomes in models that do not control for possible correlations between common unobserved determinants of family structure and educational performance. But once endogeneity is accounted for, whether by using sibling-difference estimators or two types of instrumental variable estimator, the evidence that family structure affects schooling outcomes is much less conclusive. Although almost all the point estimates indicate that non-intactness has an adverse effect on schooling outcomes, confidence intervals are large and span zero. |
| Keywords: | childhood family structure, education success, instrumental variables, lone parents, sibling differences, treatment effects |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2005-22&r=hrm |
| By: | Gladys López-Acevedo (The World Bank and LCSPP) |
| Abstract: | The National School for Professional Technology Education (CONALEP) is Mexico's largest and oldest technical education system. CONALEP serves low-income students at the upper-secondary school level in Mexico. The labor market performance of CONALEP graduates has been evaluated four times in the past. These evaluations have yielded encouraging results, showing that CONALEP's graduates find jobs faster and earn higher wages than similar "control" groups. In contrast, using non-experimental methods, this paper suggests that CONALEP's graduates might earn higher wages but do not find jobs faster compared with control groups. |
| Keywords: | Education |
| Date: | 2005–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3572&r=hrm |
| By: | Ludger Woessmann (University of Munich); Thomas Fuchs (University of Munich) |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the relationship between family background, school characteristics, and student achievement in primary school in two Latin American countries, Argentina and Colombia, as well as several comparison countries. The database used is the student-level international achievement data of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), which tested the reading performance of fourth-grade students in 2001. The nationally representative samples have 3,300 students in Argentina and 5,131 students in Colombia. The emerging general pattern of results is that educational performance is strongly related to students' family background, weakly to some institutional school features, and hardly to schools' resource endowments. In an international perspective, estimated family background effects are relatively large in Argentina, and relatively small in Colombia. A specific Argentine feature is the lack of performance differences between rural and urban areas. A specific Colombian feature is the lack of significant differences between gender performance. Nonnative students and students not speaking Spanish at home have particularly weak performance in both countries. But there are no differences by parental occupation and no positive effects of kindergarten attendance. In Argentina, students perform better in schools with a centralized curriculum and ability-based class formation. |
| Keywords: | Education |
| Date: | 2005–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3537&r=hrm |
| By: | Jorge Augusto Paz |
| Abstract: | This work studies the relationship between education and labor market performance, first by making a review of the literature on the subject, and then by examining certain stylized facts. For the empirical evaluation, education is analysed through the educational attainment reached by economic agents and the labor market by certain results: remunerations, probabilities to participate, to be employed or unemployed. The issue of the probability to access better jobs is also approached. Therefore, education is here discussed as an input, and labor market results, as an output. |
| JEL: | I20 J24 |
| Date: | 2005–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:311&r=hrm |
| By: | Nicolai Kristensen (The World Bank); Dorte Verner (The World Bank) |
| Abstract: | The authors investigate the extent and nature of distortions in the labor market in the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire by using quantile regression analysis on employer-employee data from the manufacturing sector. They find that the labor markets in Côte d'Ivoire do not seem to be much distorted. Unions may influence employment through tenure but do not seem to influence wages directly except for vulnerable minorities that seem protected by unions. Establishment-size wage effects are pronounced and highest for white-collar workers. This may be explained by the efficiency wage theory, so that, even in the absence of unions, segmentation and inefficiencies will still be present as long as firms seek to retain their employees by paying wages above the market clearing level. The inefficiency arising from establishment-size wage effects can be mitigated by education. Furthermore, the authors find that the premium to education is highly significantly positive only for higher education, and not for basic education, indicating that educational policies should also focus on higher education. |
| Keywords: | ??? |
| Date: | 2005–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3771&r=hrm |
| By: | Margherita Fort (University of Padua) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses the causal effects of education on the timing of first births allowing for heterogeneity in the effects across individuals while controlling for self-selection of women into education. Identification relies on exogenous variation in schooling induced by a mandatory school reform rolled out nationwide in Italy in the early 1960s. Findings based on Census data (Italy, 1981) suggest that a large fraction of the women affected by the reform postpone the time of the first birth but catch up with this fertility delay before turning 26. There is some indication that the fertility return to schooling of these women is substantially different from the one of the average individual in the population. |
| Keywords: | education |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2005-20&r=hrm |
| By: | Rajashri Chakrabarti (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the impact of voucher design on student sorting, and more specifically investigates whether there are feasible ways of designing vouchers that can reduce or eliminate student sorting. It studies these questions in the context of the first five years of the Milwaukee voucher program. Much of the existing literature investigates the question of sorting where private schools can screen students. However, the publicly funded U.S. voucher programs require private schools to accept all students unless oversubscribed and to pick students randomly if oversubscribed. This paper focuses on two crucial features of the Milwaukee voucher program - random private school selection and the absence of topping up of vouchers. In the context of a theoretical model, it argues that random private school selection alone cannot prevent student sorting. However, random private school selection coupled with the absence of topping up can preclude sorting by income, although there is still sorting by ability. Sorting by ability is not caused here by private school selection, but rather by parental self selection. Using a logit model and student level data from the Milwaukee voucher program for 1990-94, it then establishes that random selection has indeed taken place so that it provides an appropriate setting to test the corresponding theoretical predictions in the data. Next, using several alternative logit specifications, it demonstrates that these predictions are validated empirically. These findings have important policy implications. |
| Keywords: | Vouchers, Sorting, Cream Skimming, Private Schools |
| JEL: | H0 I21 I28 |
| Date: | 2005–12–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0512004&r=hrm |
| By: | Aaditya Mattoo (The World Bank); Ileana Cristina Neagu (The World Bank); Çalar Özden (The World Bank) |
| Abstract: | The authors investigate the occupational placement of immigrants in the U.S. labor market using census data. They find striking differences among highly educated immigrants from different countries, even after they control for individuals' age, experience, and level of education. With some exceptions, educated immigrants from Latin American and Eastern European countries are more likely to end up in unskilled jobs than immigrants from Asia and industrial countries. A large part of the variation can be explained by attributes of the country of origin that influence the quality of human capital, such as expenditure on tertiary education and the use of English as a medium of instruction. Performance is adversely affected by military conflict at home which may weaken institutions that create human capital and lower the threshold quality of immigrants. The selection effects of U.S. immigration policy also play an important role in explaining cross-country variation. The observed under-placement of educated migrants might be alleviated if home and host countries cooperate by sharing information on labor market conditions and work toward the recognition of qualifications. |
| Keywords: | International economics |
| Date: | 2005–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3581&r=hrm |
| By: | Jishnu Das (The World Bank); Stefan Dercon (Oxford University); James Habyarimana (Georgetown University); Pramila Krishnan (Cambridge University) |
| Abstract: | A large literature examines the link between shocks to households and the educational attainment of children. The authors use new data to estimate the impact of shocks to teachers on student learning in mathematics and English. Using absenteeism in the 30 days preceding the survey as a measure of these shocks they find large impacts: A 5 percent increase in the teacher's absence rate reduces learning by 4 to 8 percent of average gains over the year. This reduction in learning achievement likely reflects both the direct effect of increased absenteeism and the indirect effects of less lesson preparation and lower teaching quality when in class. The authors document that health problems-primarily teachers' own illness and the illnesses of their family members-account for more than 60 percent of teacher absences; not surprising in a country struggling with an HIV/AIDS epidemic. The relationship between shocks to teachers and student learning suggests that households are unable to substitute adequately for teaching inputs. Excess teaching capacity that allows for the greater use of substitute teachers could lead to larger gains in student learning. |
| Keywords: | Poverty, Rural development, Labor and employment, Education |
| Date: | 2005–04–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3602&r=hrm |
| By: | Rajashri Chakrabarti (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I analyze the behavior of public schools facing vouchers. The literature on the effect of voucher programs on public schools typically focuses on student and mean school scores. This paper tries to go inside the black box to investigate some of the ways in which schools facing the threat of vouchers in Florida behaved. Florida schools getting an 'F' grade are exposed to the threat of vouchers, while vouchers are implemented if they get another 'F' grade in the next three years. Exploiting the institutional details of the 1999 program, I analyze the incentives built into the system and investigate whether the threatened public schools behaved strategically to respond to incentives. There is strong evidence that they did respond to incentives. Using highly disaggregated school level data, a difference- in-differences estimation strategy as well as a regression discontinuity analysis, I find that the threatened schools tended to focus more on students below the minimum criteria cutoffs rather than equally on all, but interestingly, this improvement did not come at the expense of higher performing students. Second, consistent with incentives, they focused mostly on writing rather than reading and math. Finally, consistent with substantial costs associated with such reclassification during that period, there is not much evidence of relative reclassification of low performing students in to special education categories exempt from the calculation of grades. These results are robust to controlling for differential pre-program trends, changes in demographic compositions, mean reversion and sorting. These findings have important policy implications and subsequent grading rule changes in Florida suggest that these policy changes have been a response to public school behavior. |
| Keywords: | Vouchers, Incentives, Strategic Behavior, Regression Discontinuity, Mean Reversion |
| JEL: | H4 I21 I28 |
| Date: | 2005–12–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0512002&r=hrm |
| By: | Rabah, AMIR; Malgorzata, KNAUFF |
| Abstract: | An objective ranking of economics departments worldwide in terms of graduate education is derived. The central idea is that the value of a department is the sum of the values of its PhD graduates, as reflected in the values of their current employing departments. The scores are thus derived as solutions to a linear system of simultaneous equations in the values. The sample includes the top fifty-four departments, the composition of which is determined endogenously using a criterion requiring a minimum of four placements in the departments comprising the sample. Two other related rankings are proposed, which place more emphasis on more recent faculty recruitments. The results point to a very high concentration in the economics PhD education market worldwide, confirming the dominance of the top U.S. departments, in particular of Harvard and M.I.T. Nevertheless, a modest de-concentration trend is under way. The rankings are in close agreement with the 1994 National Research Council survey ranking based on the perceived quality of PhD programs |
| Keywords: | Economics PhD education; scientific evaluation methods; economic department ranking |
| JEL: | A14 L11 R32 |
| Date: | 2005–07–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvec:2005041&r=hrm |
| By: | Rajashri Chakrabarti (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | The Milwaukee voucher program, as implemented in 1990, allowed only non- sectarian private schools to participate in the program. Following a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, the program saw a major shift and entered into its second phase, when religious private schools were allowed to participate for the first time in 1998. This led to more than a three-fold increase in the number of private schools and almost a four-fold increase in the number of choice students. Moreover, due to some changes in funding provisions, the revenue loss per student from vouchers increased in the second phase of the program. This paper analyzes, both theoretically and empirically, the impacts of these changes on public school performance in Milwaukee. It argues that voucher design matters and that the choice of parameters in a voucher program is crucial as far as impacts on public school incentives and performance are concerned. In the context of a theoretical model of public school and household behavior, the paper establishes that the policy changes will lead to an improvement of the public schools in the second phase of the program as compared to the first phase. Following Hoxby (2003a, 2003b) in treatment-control group classification, using data from 1987 to 2002, and a difference-in-differences estimation strategy in trends, the paper then shows that the theoretical prediction is validated empirically. This result is robust to alternative samples and specifications, and survive robustness checks including correcting for mean reversion. |
| Keywords: | Vouchers, Public School Performance, Competition, Mean Reversion |
| JEL: | H4 I21 I28 |
| Date: | 2005–12–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0512003&r=hrm |
| By: | Philip Stevens (National Institute of Economic & Social Research) |
| Abstract: | This paper considers the job satisfaction of academics using a detailed dataset of over two thousand academics from ten English higher education institutions. The results of our analysis suggest that one would be wrong to consider one single measure of job-satisfaction. Academics appear to be considering three separate sets of elements of their jobs, namely the pecuniary factors (both the salary and the ability to earn money from additional work. We also consider the influence of these elements of job satisfaction on their intentions to leave the sector. |
| Keywords: | Satisfaction, academics, turnover, comparison income |
| JEL: | C25 J28 J63 |
| Date: | 2005–12–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:0512005&r=hrm |