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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2006‒03‒25
four papers chosen by Jonas Holmstrom Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | Wendy A. Stock (Department of Economics and Agricultural Economics, Montana State University); John J. Siegfried (Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University and AEA) |
| Abstract: | We report early career outcomes of economics Ph.D.s by tracking the U.S. class of 1996-97. We examine employment outcomes, work activities, salaries, and graduates' attitudes toward their jobs. By 2003, all of the respondents were employed, although almost half changed employers during the six years. Salaries of the cohort increased at an average annual rate of 8.2 percent from 1997 through 2003. Academic-year salaries rose about 5.7 percent per year, while private sector salaries skyrocketed at 15 percent per year. Finally, the median salaries of first-year full-time permanent 9-10 month academic economists hired in 2002-03 actually exceed the 2003 salaries of their counterparts initially hired in 1997-98. Some of this apparent salary inversion reflects a different mix of employers and departments between the two cohorts, with the younger group securing relatively more jobs at higher paying institutions. |
| Keywords: | Economists, employment, salaries |
| JEL: | A11 J44 J40 J30 |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:van:wpaper:0605&r=sog |
| By: | John Creedy |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to give a short description of the nature of books and journals, their respective editors, and the difficult process and proprieties involved in publishing papers. It describes some of the main features of the publication process, so that readers may be in a better position to make judgements about published work and writers may be, to some extent at least, prepared to face the difficulties that inevitably lie in their path. Emphasis is given to the need to deal with rejections and the often substantial revisions requested by editors. While some of the features of publishing are common to all disciplines, this paper is specifically intended for economists. |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mlb:wpaper:934&r=sog |
| By: | Hans J. Baumgartner (DIW Berlin); Viktor Steiner (Free University of Berlin, DIW Berlin and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Students from low-income families are eligible to student aid under the federal students’ financial assistance scheme (BAfoeG) in Germany. We evaluate the effectiveness of a recent reform of student aid that substantially increased the amount received by eligible students to raise enrolment rates into tertiary education. We view this reform as a ‘natural experiment’ and apply the difference-in-difference methodology using a discrete-time hazard rate model to estimate the causal effect on enrolment rates into higher education. We find that the reform had a small positive but statistically insignificant effect on enrolment rates. |
| Keywords: | educational transitions, educational finance, natural experiment and difference-indifference estimation |
| JEL: | H31 I28 I22 J24 |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2034&r=sog |
| By: | Maresa, SPRIETSMA (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)) |
| Abstract: | School choice and accountability have become popular educational policies in the US and the UK. In Europe, such policies are less often applied and therefore less subject to research. The present paper uses recent international data to study the impact of schools comparing their pupil’s results to a regional or national performance standard and that of regional school choice on student test scores. School performance comparisons and school choice by parents are assumed to complement each other in increasing both school and teacher effort. We estimate an education production function controlling for the hierarchical nature of the data. We also estimate our model using quantiles of student test scores to identify potentially different effects at different levels of student performance. We find that both a higher regional percentage of schools comparing their results and regional intensity of school choice significantly improve student test scores. This positive effect varies in size according to whether we consider low or high-performancing students. |
| Keywords: | School choice; school performance standards; education production function; pupil performance; hierarchical models |
| JEL: | I20 I28 |
| Date: | 2006–02–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvec:2006002&r=sog |