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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Lydia Mechtenberg; Roland Strausz |
| Abstract: | We analyze the two goals behind the European Bologna Process of increasing student mobility: enabling graduates to develop multi– cultural skills and increasing the quality of universities. We isolate three effects: 1) a competition effect that raises quality; 2) a free rider effect that lowers quality; 3) a composition effect that influences the relative strengths of the two previous effects. The effects lead to a trade–off between the two goals. Full mobility may be optimal, only when externalities are high. In this case, student mobility yields inef- ficiently high educational quality. For moderate externalities partial mobility is optimal and yields an inefficiently low quality of education. |
| Keywords: | Student mobility, Quality of higher education, Multi–cultural skills, Bologna Process |
| JEL: | D61 H77 I28 |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2006-018&r=hrm |
| By: | Horst Entorf (Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre (Department of Economics), Technische Universität Darmstadt (Darmstadt University of Technology)); Martina Lauk (Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre (Department of Economics), Technische Universität Darmstadt (Darmstadt University of Technology)) |
| Abstract: | This article analyses the school performance of migrants dependent on peer groups in different international schooling environments. Using data from the international OECD PISA test, we consider social interaction within and between groups of natives and migrants. Results based on social multipliers (Glaeser et al. 2000, 2003) suggest that both native-to-native and migrant-to-migrant peer effects are higher in ability-differencing school systems than in comprehensive schools. Thus, non-comprehensive school systems seem to magnify the prevailing educational inequality between students with a low parental socioeconomic migration background and children from more privileged families. |
| Keywords: | Peer effects, migration, education, social multipliers, school systems, parental socioeconomic background |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tud:ddpiec:164&r=hrm |
| By: | Eleonora Patacchini (University of Rome "La Sapienza"); Yves Zenou (IUI, GAINS, CEPR and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the sources of differences in school performance between students of different races by focusing on identity issues. We find that having a higher percentage of same-race friends has a positive effect of white teenagers’ test score while having a negative effect on blacks’ test scores. However, the higher the education level of a black teenager’s parent, the lower this negative effect, while for whites, it is the reverse. It is thus the combination of the choice of friends (which is a measure of own identity) and the parent’s education that are responsible for the difference in education attainment between students of different races but also between students of the same race. One interesting aspects of this paper is to provide a theoretical model that grounds the instrumental variable approach used in the empirical analysis to deal with endogeneity issues. |
| Keywords: | ethnic minorities, peer effects, education achievement, endogeneity issues |
| JEL: | A14 I21 J15 J24 |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2046&r=hrm |
| By: | Günther Rehme (Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | In this paper education simultaneously affects growth and income inequality. More education does not necessarily decrease inequality when the latter is assessed by the Lorenz dominance criterion. Increases in education first increase and then decrease growth as well as income inequality, when measured by the Gini coefficient. There is no clear functional relationship between growth and measured income inequality. The model identifies regimes of this relationship which depend crucially on the production and schooling technology. Conventional growth regressions with human capital and inequality as regressors may miss the richness of the underlying nonlinearities, but viewed as approximations may still provide important information on the nonlinear relationship between growth and education. |
| Keywords: | Education, Growth, Inequality, Policy |
| JEL: | O4 I2 D31 H2 |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tud:ddpiec:163&r=hrm |
| By: | Nicolas Bauduin (MEDEE, Université de Lille 1, and IFRESI-CNRS.); Joël Hellier (MEDEE, Université de Lille 1, and IFRESI-CNRS and LEN, Université de Nantes) |
| Abstract: | Within a model where the parents make the decisions relating to their children’s education, we show that skill dynamics normally results in a sub-optimal situation involving income per capita. This derives from an under-education trap that is endogenously generated. When sub-optimality is caused by a lack of human capital at the steady state, a minimum wage or a redistribution policy makes it possible to increase output per capita and to reduce inequality because both increase the educated share of the population by raising certain households above the trap. These policies only need to be implemented over one period of time, i.e. one generation. Moreover, the sooner they are laid down, the more efficient these policies become. Finally, the income per head at the steady state is higher when individuals have naive expectations rather than when they have perfect predictions. Several simulations are performed that illustrate and corroborate these findings. |
| Keywords: | Education, Inequality, Minimum wage, Redistribution. |
| JEL: | I21 I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2006-34&r=hrm |
| By: | Herbert Brücker (IAB Nuremberg and IZA Bonn); Cécily Defoort (University of Lille II and University of Louvain) |
| Abstract: | This paper reconsiders the (self-)selection of international migrants. In an extended Roymodel we analyse the factors which affect the selection bias of migrants. In particular, we find that migrants need not necessarily be (un-)favourably self-selected if the inequality of earnings is higher (lower) in the receiving country compared to the sending country. Moreover, migrants might be favourably (self-)selected if the migration costs tend to decline with the skill level of migrants, even if the inequality of earnings is larger in the destination relative to the sending country. Based on a novel data set we find descriptive evidence that migrants tend be positively (self-)selected although the inequality in earnings is higher in the sending relative to the receiving countries. Moreover, our regressions results indicate that both, a higher inequality in the host and the home country, is associated with a favourable selection bias. |
| Keywords: | international migration, self-selection of migrants, human capital of migrants |
| JEL: | F22 |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2052&r=hrm |
| By: | Joachim Wagner (Institute of Economics, University of Lüneburg) |
| Abstract: | Based on data from a recent representative survey of the adult population in Germany this paper documents that the patterns of variables influencing nascent and infant entrepreneurship are quite similar and broadly in line with our theoretical priors – both types of entrepreneurship are fostered by the width of experience and a role model in the family, and hindered by risk aversion, while being male is a supporting factor. Results of this study using cross section data are in line with conclusions from longitudinal studies for other countries finding that between one in two and one in three nascent entrepreneurs become infant entrepreneurs, and that observed individual characteristics – with the important exception of former experience as an employee in the industry of the new venture - tend to play a minor role only in differentiating who starts and who gives up. |
| Keywords: | Nascent entrepreneurs, infant entrepreneurs, Germany |
| JEL: | J23 |
| Date: | 2005–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lue:wpaper:1&r=hrm |
| By: | Iranzo, Susana; Schivardi, Fabiano; Tosetti, Elisa |
| Abstract: | We study the relation between workers' skill dispersion and firm productivity using a unique dataset of Italian manufacturing firms from the early eighties to the late nineties with individual records on all their workers. Our measure of skill is the individual worker's effect obtained as a latent variable from a wage equation. Estimates of a generalized CES production function that depends on the skill composition show that a firm's productivity is positively related to skill dispersion within occupational status groups (production and non-production workers) and negatively related to skill dispersion between these groups. Consistently, the variance decomposition shows that most of the overall skill dispersion is within and not between firms. We find no change over time in the share of each component, in contrast with some evidence from other countries, based on less comprehensive data. |
| Keywords: | matched data; productivity; segregation; skills |
| JEL: | D24 J24 L23 |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5539&r=hrm |
| By: | Joachim Wagner (Institute of Economics, University of Lüneburg); Thorsten Schank (Chair of Labour and Regional Economics, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg); Claus Schnabel (Chair of Labour and Regional Economics, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg); John T. Addison (Department of Economics, University of South Carolina (US)) |
| Abstract: | Using OLS and quantile regression methods and rich cross-section data sets for western and eastern Germany, this paper demonstrates that the impact of works council presence on labor productivity varies between manufacturing and services, between plants that are or are not covered by collective bargaining, and along the conditional distribution of labor productivity. No productivity effects of works councils are found for the service sector and in manufacturing plants not covered by collective bargaining. Besides demonstrating that it is important to look at evidence based on more than one data set, our empirical findings point to the efficacy of supplementing OLS with quantile regression estimates when investigating the behavior of heterogeneous plants. |
| Keywords: | Labor productivity, works councils, quantile regressions, heterogeneous firms |
| JEL: | J50 |
| Date: | 2006–02–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lue:wpaper:22&r=hrm |
| By: | Lionel Artige; Rosella Nicolini |
| Abstract: | The present paper aims at analyzing the sources of productivity in Europe to account for its recent underperformance and identify potential geographic idiosyncracies. We study the productivity performance and its sources in a sample of ten European regions belonging to four countries (France, Germany, Italy and Spain). Exploiting the increasing availability of disaggregated data at regional level in Europe, we propose both a descriptive statistics and an econometric analysis of productivity sources since 1995. Our main finding is that the sources of labor productivity are rather heterogeneous across our sample but may be associated with regional or national idiosyncracies. |
| Keywords: | Labor productivity, productivity determinants, European regions |
| JEL: | J24 O11 O18 O52 |
| Date: | 2006–03–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aub:autbar:661.06&r=hrm |