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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
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Issue of 2006‒10‒21
twelve papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Universita degli Studi di Roma, La Sapienza |
| By: | Jaag, Christian |
| Abstract: | This paper considers the influence of spatial competition on education and its effect on students' school choice and educational achievement by explicitely modeling educational production and the students' participation decision. Education at school is a function of teacher effort and class size. Students decide which school to attend on the basis of an assessment of the associated costs and prospective benefits from doing so. We analyze how competition between schools affects equilibrium resource spending and school diversity as well as the level and distribution of student attainment and welfare. The consideration of spatial aspects of school choice without recourse to vertical differentiation is a unique contribution of this paper. We argue that schools in metropolitan areas with short ways to school and many potential students face fiercer competition which increases school productivity and student performance. This result confirms the findings in Hoxby (2000). Overall learning time in school is constant in the probability that students behave well if students are segregated by type. However, better behaved students have a higher achievement due to higher optimum resource spending. Finally, we support our argument by an empirical analysis of student performance in various matura schools in Switzerland. |
| Keywords: | Schools; Education; Competition |
| JEL: | I21 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:339&r=hrm |
| By: | Patrinos, Harry Anthony; Ridao-Cano, Cris; Sakellariou, Chris |
| Abstract: | Typically estimates of the benefits of education investments show average private rates of return for the average individual. The average may not be useful for policy. An examination of the distribution of the returns across individuals is needed. The few studies that have examined these patterns focus on high-income countries, showing investments to be more profitable at the top of the income distribution. The implication is that investments may increase inequality. Extending the analysis to 16 East Asian and Latin American countries the authors observe mixed evidence in middle-income countries and decreasing returns in low-income countries. Such differences between countries could be due to more job mobility in industrial countries, scarcity of skills, or differential exposure to market forces. |
| Keywords: | Access & Equity in Basic Education,Education For All,Teaching and Learning,Primary Education,Education and Society |
| Date: | 2006–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4040&r=hrm |
| By: | Bruno L. s. Falcão (Yale University); Rodrigo Reis Soares (Department of Economics PUC-Rio) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a theory where increases in female labor force participation and reductions in the gender wage-gap are generated as part of a single process of demographic transition, characterized by reductions in mortality and fertility. The paper suggests a link between changes in mortality and transformations in the role of women in society that has not been identified before in the literature. Mortality reductions affect the incentives of individuals to invest in human capital and to have children. Particularly, gains in adult longevity reduce fertility, increase investments in market human capital, increase female labor force participation, and reduce the wage differential between men and women. Child mortality reductions, though reducing fertility, do not generate this same pattern of changes. The model reconciles the increase in female labor market participation with the timing of age-specific mortality reductions observed during the demographic transition. It generates changes in fertility, labor market attachment, and the gender wage-gap as part of a single process of social transformation, triggered by reductions in mortality. |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rio:texdis:528&r=hrm |
| By: | Skoufias, Emmanuel; Shapiro, Joseph |
| Abstract: | The authors evaluate whether increasing school resources and decentralizing management decisions at the school level improves learning in a developing country. Mexico ' s Quality Schools Program (PEC), following many other countries and U.S. states, offers US$15,000 grants for public schools to implement five-year improvement plans that the school ' s staff and community design. Using a three-year panel of 74,700 schools, the authors estimate the impact of the PEC on dropout, repetition, and failure using two common nonexperimental methods-regression analysis and propensity score matching. The methods provide similar but nonidentical results. The preferred estimator, difference-in-differences with matching, reveals that participation in the PEC decreases dropout by 0.24 percentage points, failure by 0.24 percentage points, and repetition by 0.31 percentage points-an economically small but statistically significant impact. The PEC lacks measurable impact on outcomes in indigenous schools. The results suggest that a combination of increased resources and local management can produce small improvements in school outcomes, though perhaps not in the most troubled school systems. |
| Keywords: | Tertiary Education,Education For All,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning,Secondary Education |
| Date: | 2006–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4036&r=hrm |
| By: | Jaag, Christian |
| Abstract: | There is a large body of literature on the effect of educational resources on student performance, such as teacher qualification, class size, and physical resources in school. It is dominated by empirical studies which often find ambiguous effects of resource spending on student outcomes. The unique contribution of this paper is the provision of a framework to study educational production with differentiated input factors, which allows for closedform solutions. We try to interpret the empirical findings on the basis of a simple theoretical model of educational production: Class size, employed school resources and student effort are endogenously determined in order to account for differences in educational achievement. We also discuss the choice of integrated vs. segregated classes. Optimum class size and school quality increase with higher discipline, while in equilibrium overall classroom disruption is equal in all classes. |
| Keywords: | Schools; Education; Educational Production |
| JEL: | I21 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:338&r=hrm |
| By: | Jaag, Christian |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with two issues concerning the effects of population aging on education decisions in the presence of a PAYG pension system: We first analyze the effects of an aging population per se on individual skill choices and continuous education and the production structure. Second, we study the implications of postponed retirement, which is often proposed as a measure to cope with the economic challenges of increased longevity. Our study uses a dynamic general equilibrium framework with overlapping generations and probabilistic aging. Themodel allows for capital-skill complementarity in the production of final output. As a response to population aging, in a small open economy with a fixed interest rate, our first simulation shows that GDP is depressed due to an adverse effect on skill choice and labor supply. We then introduce postponed retirement as a potentially dampening policy measure due to its encouragement of human capital formation. However, since there is less private saving in this scenario, the overall effect on GDP is even worse than in the pure aging scenario. |
| Keywords: | Education; Human Capital; Ageing; Demographics |
| JEL: | J24 J10 |
| Date: | 2006–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:337&r=hrm |
| By: | Jaag, Christian |
| Abstract: | This paper considers hidden teacher effort in educational production and discusses the implications of multiple teacher effort dimensions on optimum incentive contracts in a theoretical framework. The analysis of educational production in a multitask framework is a new and unique contribution of this paper to the economics of education. We first characterize the first-best and second-best outcomes. The model is extended to address specific questions concerning teacher incentive schemes: We compare input- to output-based accountability measures and study the implication of the level of aggregation in performance measures. Against the background of the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of teacher incentives, we argue that performance measures should be as broad as possible. Further, we present the optimum contract for motivated teachers. Finally, if education is produced in teacher teams, we establish the conditions for optimum team-based and individual incentives: The larger the spillover effects across teacher efforts and the better the measurability of educational achievement, the stronger the case for team-based incentives. |
| JEL: | M52 I21 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:340&r=hrm |
| By: | Enriqueta Camps; Maria Camou; Silvana Maubrigades; Natalia Mora-Sitja |
| Abstract: | In this paper we analyse the reasons behind the evolution of the gender gap and wage inequality in South and East Asian and Latin American countries. Health human capital improvements, the exposure to free market openness and equal treatment enforcement laws seem to be the main exogenous variables affecting women’s economic condition. During the second globalization era (in the years 1975-2000) different combinations of these variables in South East Asian and Latin American countries have had as a result the diminution of the gender gap. The main exception to this rule according to our data is China where economic reforms have been simultaneous to the increase of gender differences and inequality between men and women. This result has further normative consequences for the measure of economic inequality. The improvement of women’s condition has as a result the diminution of the dispersion of wages. Therefore in most of the countries analysed the consequence of the diminution of the gender gapduring the second global era is the decrease of wage inequality both measured with Gini and Theil indexes. |
| Keywords: | Wage inequality, gender gap, market openness, human capital |
| JEL: | J22 J13 J16 |
| Date: | 2006–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:970&r=hrm |
| By: | Berggren, Niclas (The Ratio Institute); Jordahl, Henrik (Research Institute of Industrial Economics); Poutvaara, Panu (University of Helsinki) |
| Abstract: | We study the role of beauty in politics. For the first time, focus is put on differences in how women and men evaluate female and male candidates and how different candidate traits relate to success in real and hypothetical elections. We have collected 16,218 assessments by 2,772 respondents of photos of 1,929 Finnish political candidates. Evaluations of beauty explain success in real elections better than evaluations of competence, intelligence, likability, or trustworthiness. The beauty premium is larger for female candidates, in contrast to findings in previous labor-market studies. |
| Keywords: | Beauty; Gender; Elections; Political candidates; Beauty premium |
| JEL: | D72 J45 J70 |
| Date: | 2006–10–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0671&r=hrm |
| By: | Hvide, Hans K. (University of Aberdeen Business School); Kristiansen, Eirik G. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | We study how complementarities and intellectual property rights affect the management of knowledge workers. The main results relay when a firm will wish to sue workers that leave with innovative ideas, and the effects of complementary assets on wages and on worker initiative. We argue that firms strongly protected by property rights may not sue leaving workers in order to motivate effort, while firms weakly protected by complementary assets must sue in order to obtain positive profits. Firms with more complementary assets pay higher wages (and have lower turnover), but such higher pay has a detrimental effect on worker initiative. Our analysis suggests that strengthened property rights protection reduces turnover costs but weakens worker initiative. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneurship; Innovation; IPP; Litigation; Personnel economics; R&D; Start-ups |
| JEL: | K41 M13 M50 O32 |
| Date: | 2006–08–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2006_007&r=hrm |
| By: | Piñeiro, Erik |
| Date: | 2005–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhb:pinkwp:7&r=hrm |
| By: | Berninghaus, Siegfried K. (Universität Karlsruhe); Fischer, Sven (Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic Systems. Strategic Interaction Group); Gueth, Werner (Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic Systems, Strategic Interaction Group) |
| Abstract: | There is robust field data showing that a frequent and successful way of looking for a job is via the intermediation of friends and relatives. Here we want to test this experimentally. Participants first play a simple public goods game with two interaction partners ('friends'), and share whatever they earn this way with two different sharing partners ('cousins') who have different friends. Thus one's social network contains two 'friends' and two 'cousins'. In the second phase of the experiment participants learn about a job opportunity for themselves and one additional vacancy and decide whom of their network they want to recommend and, if so, in which order. In case of coemployment, both employees compete for a bonus. Will one recommend others for the additional job in spite of this competition, will one prefer 'friends' or 'cousins' and how does this depend on contributions (of 'friends') or shared profits (with 'cousins')? Our findings are partly quite puzzling. Most participants, for instance, recommend quite actively but compete very fiercely for the bonus. |
| Date: | 2006–10–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:xrs:sfbmaa:06-11&r=hrm |