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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
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Issue of 2006‒11‒18
thirteen papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Universita degli Studi di Roma, La Sapienza |
| By: | Daniel Mejía; Marc St-Pierre |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a tractable, heterogeneous agents general equilibrium model where individuals have different endowments of the factors that complement the schooling process. The paper explores the relationship between inequality of opportunities, inequality of outcomes, and aggregate efficiency in human capital formation. Using numerical solutions we study how the endogenous variables of the model respond to two different interventions in the distribution of opportunities: a meanpreserving spread and a change in the support. The results suggest that a higher degree of inequality of opportunities is associated with lower average level of human capital, a lower fraction of individuals investing in human capital, higher inequality in the distribution of human capital, and higher wage inequality. In particular, the model does not predict a trade-off between aggregate efficiency in human capital formation (as measured by the average level of human capital in the economy) and equality of opportunity. |
| Keywords: | Human Capital, Inequality, Equity-Efficiency Trade-off. Classification JEL: J24; J31; O15; D33. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdr:borrec:415&r=hrm |
| By: | James D. Adams; J. Roger Clemmons |
| Abstract: | This paper presents new evidence on research and teaching productivity in universities using a panel of 102 top U.S. schools during 1981-1999. Faculty employment grows at 0.6 percent per year, compared with growth of 4.9 percent in industrial researchers. Productivity growth per researcher is 1.4-6.7 percent and is higher in private universities. Productivity growth per teacher is 0.8-1.1 percent and is higher in public universities. Growth in research productivity within universities exceeds overall growth, because the research share grows in universities where productivity growth is less. This finding suggests that allocative efficiency of U.S. higher education declined during the late 20th century. R&D stock, endowment, and post-docs increase research productivity in universities, the effect of nonfederal R&D is less, and the returns to research are diminishing. Since the nonfederal R&D share grows and is higher in public schools, this may explain the rising inefficiency. Decreasing returns in research but not teaching suggest that most differences in university size are due to teaching. |
| JEL: | J3 L3 O3 |
| Date: | 2006–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12683&r=hrm |
| By: | Eliot A. Jamison; Dean T. Jamison; Eric A. Hanushek |
| Abstract: | Previous work shows that higher levels of education quality (as measured by international student achievement tests) increases growth rates of national income. This paper begins by confirming those findings in an analysis involving more countries over more time with additional controls. We then use the panel structure of our data to assess whether the mechanism by which education quality appears to improve per capita income levels is through shifting the level of the production function (probably not), through increasing the impact of an additional year of education (probably not), or through increasing a country's rate of technological progress (very likely). Mortality rates complement income levels as indicators of national well-being and we extend our panel models to show that improved education quality increases the rate of decline in infant mortality. Throughout the analysis, we find a stronger impact of education quality and of years of schooling in open than in closed economies. |
| JEL: | F4 I2 J0 J21 O4 I1 |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12652&r=hrm |
| By: | Eric A. Hanushek; Steven G. Rivkin |
| Abstract: | Substantial uncertainty exists about the impact of school quality on the black-white achievement gap. Our results, based on both Texas Schools Project (TSP) administrative data and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS), differ noticeably from other recent analyses of the black-white achievement gap by providing strong evidence that schools have a substantial effect on the differential. The majority of the expansion of the achievement gap with age occurs between rather than within schools, and specific school and peer factors exert a significant effect on the growth in the achievement gap. Unequal distributions of inexperienced teachers and of racial concentrations in schools can explain all of the increased achievement gap between grades 3 and 8. Moreover, non-random sample attrition for school changers and much higher rates of special education classification and grade retention for blacks appears to lead to a significant understatement of the increase in the achievement gap with age within the ECLS and other data sets. |
| JEL: | H4 H7 I2 J15 J7 I1 |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12651&r=hrm |
| By: | Matthias Doepke |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cla:uclaol:411&r=hrm |
| By: | Eric A. Hanushek; Lei Zhang |
| Abstract: | Returns to education are traditionally estimated in a Mincer wage equation from the variation in schooling for a cross-section of individuals of different ages. Because individuals receive education at different time periods, when the quality of their education may not be identical, this method leads to an over- or under-estimation of the return to education of a given quality depending on how education quality evolves over time. This quality issue interacts with ability bias from self-selection into schooling and is particularly problematic when comparing returns across different countries. Using microdata from the International Adult Literacy Survey, we construct quality adjusted measures of schooling attained at different time periods and use these along with international literacy test information to estimate returns to skills for 13 countries. Estimated returns to quality-adjusted education are considerably higher than the traditional estimate for most countries, but these are offset to varying degrees by selection biases on ability. The combined corrections alter significantly the pattern of returns to schooling and skill seen from naïve Mincer wage equations. |
| JEL: | I2 J2 |
| Date: | 2006–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12664&r=hrm |
| By: | Kalenkoski, Charlene Marie (Ohio University); Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) |
| Abstract: | Using nationally representative data from the NLSY97 and a simultaneous equations model, this paper analyzes the financial motivations for and the effects of employment on U.S. college students’ academic performance. The data confirm the predictions of the theoretical model that lower parental transfers and greater costs of attending college increase the number of hours students work while in school, although students are not very responsive to these financial motivations. They also show that increased hours of work lead to lower grade point averages (GPAs), at least for students attending four-year colleges. |
| Keywords: | employment, transfers, GPA |
| JEL: | D1 I2 J22 |
| Date: | 2006–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bls:wpaper:ec060130&r=hrm |
| By: | Drusilla K. Brown; Thomas Downes; Karen Eggleston; Ratna Kumari |
| Abstract: | We examine the role that buyers play in helping vendors uncover productivity-enhancing labor management innovations. We report on a buyer-directed factory-based program targeting intestinal parasites and anemia in seven Bangalore apparel factories. Raw pre-post productivity comparisons were confounded by factory organizational changes that were implemented in anticipation of the termination of the MFA. Using a DDD estimator, treatment was found to increase individual productivity of anemic workers by 8 percent. The treatment program also reduced the probability that an anemic worker would leave the factory by 38 percent. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0616&r=hrm |
| By: | Guillaume Haeringer; Flip Klijn |
| Abstract: | Recently, several school districts in the US have adopted or consider adopting the Student-Optimal Stable Mechanism or the Top Trading Cycles Mechanism to assign children to public schools. There is clear evidence that for school districts that employ (variants of) the so-called Boston Mechanism the transition would lead to efficiency gains. The first two mechanisms are strategy-proof, but in practice student assignment procedures impede students to submit a preference list that contains all their acceptable schools. Therefore, any desirable property of the mechanisms is likely to get distorted. We study the non trivial preference revelation game where students can only declare up to a fixed number (quota) of schools to be acceptable. We focus on the stability of the Nash equilibrium outcomes. Our main results identify rather stringent necessary and sufficient conditions on the priorities to guarantee stability. This stands in sharp contrast with the Boston Mechanism which yields stable Nash equilibrium outcomes, independently of the quota. Hence, the transition to any of the two mechanisms is likely to come with a higher risk that students seek legal action as lower priority students may occupy more preferred schools. |
| Keywords: | school choice, matching, stability, Gale-Shapley deferred acceptance algorithm, top trading cycles, Boston mechanism, acyclic priority structure, truncation |
| JEL: | C78 D78 I20 |
| Date: | 2006–11–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aub:autbar:671.06&r=hrm |
| By: | Simon C. Parker (Durham University); Mirjam C. van Praag (Universiteit van Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | We analyse the decision to become an entrepreneur by either taking over an established business or starting a new venture from scratch. A model is developed which predicts how several individual- and firm-specific characteristics influence entrepreneurs\' entry mode. The new venture creation mode is associated with higher levels of schooling and wealth, whereas managerial experience, new venture start-up capital requirements and risk promote the takeover mode. Entrepreneurs whose parents run a family firm are predicted to invest the least in schooling, since schooling reduces search costs and these individuals have the lowest probability of needing to search for a business opportunity outside their family. A sample of data on entrepreneurs from the Netherlands provides broad support for the theory; implications for policy-makers concerned about the survival of family firms lacking within-family successors are discussed. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship; human capital; business takeover; venture start up; family firm |
| JEL: | J24 M13 |
| Date: | 2006–10–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20060089&r=hrm |
| By: | Baycan-Levent, Tuzin (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen en Econometrie (Free University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics Sciences, Business Administration and Economitrics); Nijkamp,Peter |
| Abstract: | The present paper investigates migrant female entrepreneurship on the basis of driving forces, motivation and performance of migrant women entrepreneurs. We review the factors that push migrant females towards entrepreneurship and that determine their entrepreneurial performance. In order to understand and test the determinant factors behind the motivation towards entrepreneurship as well as the economic and survival performance of migrant women entrepreneurs, this paper addresses in the empirical part Turkish female entrepreneurs in Amsterdam. The data and information used for evaluation are based on in-depth personal interviews. As a rather novel methodological contribution, a recently developed artificial intelligence method, i.e. rough set analysis, is deployed to assess and identify the most important factors in motivation and performance of migrant females. |
| Keywords: | Turkish female workers; Amsterdam |
| JEL: | M13 J61 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:vuarem:2006-18&r=hrm |
| By: | Hoshino, Taeko |
| Abstract: | The involvement of members of owners' families in the running of large family businesses in Mexico is decreasing. Although family members still hold key posts such as that of CEO, other executive posts tend to be delegated to professional salaried managers. Top managers, including family members, share some common characteristics. They are young compared with managers in other developed countries, their quality as human resources is high, and many of them are graduates of overseas MBA courses. Most of them are sufficiently experienced. Improvement of quality among top managers is a recent phenomenon in Mexico, and has been encouraged mainly by the following two factors. First, globalization of business activities was promoted by intense competition among firms under conditions of market liberalization. In order to equip themselves with the ability to cope with the globalization of their operations, large family businesses tried hard to improve the quality of top management, by training and educating existing managers, and/or by recruiting managers in the outside labor market. Second, developments in the Mexican economy during the 1990s led to a growth in the labor market for top managers Thus, business restructuring caused by bankruptcy, as well as mergers and acquisitions, privatization and so on, led to the dismissal of business managers who then entered the labor market in large numbers. The increasing presence of these managers in the labor market helped family businesses to recruit well-qualified senior executives. |
| Keywords: | Family business, Ownership, Management, Managers, Mexico, Family concern, Large-scale enterprises, Industrial management |
| JEL: | K22 L22 M12 M13 |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper40&r=hrm |
| By: | Das, Jishnu; Pandey, Priyanka; Zajonc, Tristan |
| Abstract: | The authors report on a survey of primary public and private schools in rural Pakistan with a focus on student achievement as measured through test scores. Absolute learning is low compared with curricular standards and international norms. Tested at the end of the third grade, a bare majority had mastered the K-I mathematics curriculum and 31 percent could correctly form a sentence with the word " school " in the vernacular (Urdu). As in high-income countries, bivariate comparisons show that higher learning is associated with household wealth and parental literacy. In sharp contrast to high-income countries, these gaps decrease dramatically in a multivariate regression once differences between children in the same school are looked at. Consequently, the largest gaps are between schools. The gap in English test scores between government and private schools, for instance, is 12 times the gap between children from rich and poor families. To contextualize these results within a broader South Asian context, the authors use data from public schools in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. Levels of learning and the structure of the educational gaps are similar in the two samples. As in Pakistan, absolute learning is low and the largest gaps are between schools: the gap between good and bad government schools, for instance, is 5 times the gap between children with literate and illiterate mothers. |
| Keywords: | Primary Education,Education For All,Tertiary Education,Secondary Education,Teaching and Learning |
| Date: | 2006–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4067&r=hrm |