Search

Given the unequal distribution of educational opportunities across regions, it is insightful to identify spatial clusters in learning performance and investigate how far the regions are from tapping their full potential of educational resources. This paper explores the spatial aspects of learning performance and estimates the technical efficiency of the primary education system of Indian districts using the spatial stochastic frontier analysis. Specifically, we investigate the effect of spatial associations between districts on primary educational efficiency in achieving better learning outcomes. Also, the study examines the regional patterns in efficiency and learning. We find evidence of spatial clustering of learning. Although the mean technical efficiency is 90 per cent, the findings demonstrate substantial regional disparities in India, with efficiency levels ranging from 68 to 97 per cent. Our results suggest that efficient districts can improve learning outcomes from extra inputs, while better utilization of existing inputs may enhance learning for the relatively inefficient districts. Thus, policy formulation needs to align with the specific shortcomings and needs of the districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the effects of China's 1986 Compulsory Education Law (CEL) on gender gaps in intrahousehold empowerment. The analysis uses a province-level dataset compiled from the population census and woman social status with a cohort difference-in-differences empirical strategy. This paper finds that the exposure to CEL had a positive impact on egalitarian intrahousehold decision making. It also increased the likelihood with which respondents reported perceiving egalitarian empowerment within the household. Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests that the results are due to exposure to CEL fostering earnings of female respondents and egalitarian gender attitudes of all respondents, as well as altering the family characteristics in terms of marriage age and husband's schooling of female respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on evaluation and program planning strategies for technology integration in education. The aim of the review was to examine the evidence on different types of strategies that can be used to design, implement, assess, and improve technology integration in educational settings, as well as the factors that influence their success. The review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and searched four databases for relevant studies published between 2010 to May 2023. A total of 124 studies met the inclusion criteria and were appraised for quality using multiple quality assessment tools. The findings were synthesized using a narrative synthesis approach. The review identified and compared various models and approaches for technology integration, such as design-based research, logic model, backward design, Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE) model, and Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) model. It also explored how organizational, technological, pedagogical, teacher, and student factors interact with the evaluation and program planning strategies and affect the outcomes of technology integration. Furthermore, the review has highlighted the importance of evidence-based practice in technology integration and the need for continuous improvement based on data from multiple sources and methods. Moreover, this review also discussed the limitations and challenges of the review and suggested directions for future research and policy development. Besides, the review contributes to the existing literature on technology integration in education by providing a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the evaluation and program planning strategies and their interaction with various factors that influence their success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether delaying motherhood beyond the teenage years benefits children. We account for selection into teenage motherhood in two parallel ways: We compare children with their cousins and we exploit miscarriages as a natural experiment that induces some women to postpone childbirth. Across the two strategies, we find no or limited effects of teenage motherhood on children's health and educational outcomes. When we use women delaying motherhood to their early twenties as a counterfactual for teenage mothers, we show suggestive evidence that the effects of such delays are nil across outcomes for both strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I investigate the impact of the inflow of Syrian refugees to Jordan on school enrollment rates of 16–21-year-old Jordanians. Using an instrumented difference-in-differences identification strategy that utilizes the variation in the share of refugees across time and space, I show that the refugee influx resulted in a decline in school enrollment, primarily among males and youths with less educated parents. Next, I show that the effect would have been larger in the absence of post-influx investments in educational infrastructure in the most impacted areas. Finally, I show an increase in employment among Jordanian youths, pointing to a potential labor market mechanism for the estimated impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first study analyzing the causal effect of female school starting age and education on fertility and infant health in China. I use Regression Discontinuity and Instrumental Variable methods and study the natural experiment created by the school entrance birthdate threshold requirement in the Compulsory Education Law. Using China Family Panel Studies from 2010 to 2016, I find that females born right after the threshold enter school 0.21 years older in age and obtain 0.59 more completed years of schooling. For females older than 23, although there is little evidence on fertility decision outcomes, starting school later significantly reduces their new-born’s low birthweight by 3.5-percentage points or 54% and times of sickness by 1.52 times. The paper explores the possible mechanisms by looking at female labor market outcomes, such as income and labor force participation, and marriage market outcomes and concludes that higher level of female education induces assortative mating. Heterogeneous test further shows that the above effects are most salient for individuals from the most developed areas or with non-agricultural origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models of social interaction have been mostly focusing on the dyad, the smallest possible social structure, as a unit of network analysis. In the context of friendship networks, we argue that the triad could also be seen as a building block to ensure cohesion and stability of larger group structures. By explicitly modeling the mechanism behind network formation, individual attributes (such as gender and ethnicity) are often dissociated from purely structural network effects (such as popularity) acknowledging the presence of more complex configurations. Allowing structural configurations to emerge when nodes share similar attribute values, real-world networks are more adequately described. We present a comprehensive set of network statistics that allow for continuous attributes to be accounted for. We also draw on the important literature on endogenous social effects to further explore the role of network structures on individual outcomes. A series of Monte Carlo experiments and an empirical example analyzing students’ friendship networks illustrate the importance of properly modeling attribute-based structural effects. In addition, we model unobserved nodal heterogeneity in the network formation process to control for possible friendship selection bias on educational outcomes. A critical issue discussed is whether friendships are related to homogeneity across several attributes or by a balance between homophily on some, such as gender and race, but heterophily on others, such as socio-economic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this study is to analyze the effect of institutional quality on education quality in developing countries. The literature review explores the channels through which institutional quality transits to affect education quality. The empirical analyses cover a sample of 82 developing countries. The main results obtained using ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares estimators show that institutional quality has a positive effect on student achievement and school completion, and a negative effect on educational failure. Concerning the role of transmission channels, the results show that a deterioration in institutional quality, characterized in particular by the presence of corruption, political instability, or the deterioration of government effectiveness, reduces the effectiveness of public spending on education and the quality of teaching through unethical behavior of teachers and the recruitment of untrained or less trained persons to carry out teaching tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advocates for education reforms frequently call for policies to increase school efficiency performance. The Greek educational system has undergone several reforms while the recent financial crisis alters significantly. Using a unique dataset this study attempts to shed light on 643 Greek secondary education schools’ efficiency performance, over the period 2000–2017, and to perform an investigation of the efficiency determinants in a multilevel framework. Results reveal that there is substantial room for improvements especially for specific Greek NUTS2 regions while the adopted reforms seem to have a very low effect. Our findings also denote a favourable effect for physics, science laboratories, and class size and a significant negative effect for the variable of student per class. In addition, at a second level the gross domestic product per capita of the NUTS2 region that each school belongs positively affects its efficiency performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study whether legal restrictions on prenatal discrimination against females leads to a shift by parents towards postnatal discrimination, focusing on the impact on educational attainment. We exploit the differentially timed introduction of a ban on sex-selective abortions across states in India. We find that a legal restriction on abortions led to an increase in the number of females born, as well as a widening in the gender gap in educational attainment. Females born in states affected by the ban are 2.3, 3.5, and 3.2 percentage points less likely to complete grade 10, complete grade 12, and enter university, respectively, relative to males. These effects are concentrated among non-wealthy households that lacked the resources to evade the ban. Investigating mechanisms, we find that the relative reduction in investments in female education was not driven by family size but because surviving females became relatively unwanted, whereas surviving males became relatively more valued, leading to an increasing concentration of household resources on them. Discrimination is amplified among higher-order births and among females with relatively few sisters. Finally, these negative effects exist despite the existence of a marriage market channel through which parents increase investments in their daughters' education to increase the probability that they make a high-quality match. This suggests that policymakers need to address the unintended welfare consequences of interventions aimed at promoting gender equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to human capital theory, wages are determined by workers' productivity which, in its crudest form, implies that return to education does not depend on how workers' skills are used. However, after controlling for other differences, the empirical evidence shows that workers with identical education are paid differently. The literature evidences that young people are more likely to experience a mismatch between their formal education and the one required for their jobs. While there is no consensus on the reasons for the mismatch phenomenon, one consequence is clear, in terms of wages overeducation means a penalty. Our evidence shows that overeducated graduates of the Facultad de Ciencias Económicas of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba suffer a wage penalty compared to those working in a job that requires a university degree. The results are robust to different specifications and the use of alternative estimators. Even though is not statistically significant, the penalty of a severe level of overeducation is higher than one for a mild level of overeducation; having had work experience while studying at university helps to reduce the cost of overeducation; women exhibit a similar penalty to men. While on average overeducation means a wage penalty, there is great heterogeneity among overeducated graduates, with those at the top end of the wage distribution experiencing a much lower penalty, or even a premium in some cases. Finally, while in the case of overeducation we find statistically significant effects, the same is not true of the horizontal mismatch in terms of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grade retention has been the focus of the education debate in Spain for decades. On average, more than 30% of students have repeated at least one grade before they finish (or dropout from) their compulsory studies. The present research provides new evidence on this issue by investigating the influence of Spain's school entry age upon students' grade retention. Using data from 15-year-old students who participated in the PISA 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015 assessments, we implement a regression discontinuity analysis. Our key finding is that students who were born late in the year (younger students) are more likely to repeat a grade. Yet, once they reach secondary education, the disadvantage they suffer due to their younger school starting age seems to disappear. Hence, the key reason why younger students have lower PISA scores than older students in Spain is due to their increased likelihood of repeating a grade, rather than being due to their relative age per se. To avoid these artificial disadvantages of younger students and unfair retention, we suggest that policymakers inform families about this school entry issue and also make the school entry law more flexible. This would facilitate parents of younger children to choose whether to delay their children's school enrolment or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motto "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" is the basic idea of innovation in every area of business life. In education, governments get involved in many studies such as the Programme for International Educational Study (PISA), which can lead policy-makers on how to measure and improve the level of education. This research focuses on determining factors that have a significant impact on the high level of achievement of students using the most recent PISA study held in 2018. With this aim, the Activity Region Finder algorithm, which is not used in the educational area in the literature, is performed for both Turkey and China. The result of Turkey is compared to China which is the best-performer country in PISA 2018. As a result of this research, metacognition competencies and the socio-economic and cultural status of students are statistically significant factors for both Turkey and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1992 to 2014, Brazil experienced a decline in income inequality along with a significant increase in schooling level, though the latter was more pronounced among women. Brazil also experienced a decline in returns to education, whereas an opposite trend was observed in several developed countries and China. In this paper, we evaluate the effects of educational, marital, and labor market factors on the income inequality of married couples. We also analyze how changes in educational assortative mating affect their income. Our findings suggest that changes in educational marital sorting parameters had a small but statistically significant effect on household income inequality. We show that growth in female labor force participation and a decrease in the gender wage gap explain part of the decline of the Gini coefficient. Educational factors also explain a part of that decline. Nevertheless, the main driver of the reduction in income inequality among couples appears to be the overall decrease in the returns to education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the long-term consequences of elementary school curricula on the formation of social preferences. The estimation results, using Japanese data, show that the hidden (non-academic) curriculum at public elementary schools varies widely by region and is associated with preference formation. Specifically, people who have experienced participatory and cooperative learning practices are more likely to be altruistic, cooperative with others, reciprocal, and have national pride. In contrast, education emphasizing anti-competitive practices is negatively associated with these attributes. Such contrasts can also be seen in other preferences regarding government policies and the market economy. The findings imply that elementary school education, as a place for early socialization, plays an important role in the formation of life-long social preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at evaluating the crucial effects of incorporating heterogeneities and hierarchies in the efficiency evaluation of higher education units through conducting multilevel frontier analysis. Using two sets of data on academic departments nested within faculties, and faculties within colleges of a comprehensive university in Iran, we simultaneously evaluate efficiency scores of departments, faculties, colleges, and the university. It has been shown that: (1) there is a great degree of heterogeneities among departments, faculties, and colleges of the university; (2) incorporating the heterogeneities changes efficiency scores which accordingly questions the accuracy of standard DEA and SFA efficiency estimates; (3) multilevel modelling helps to uncover huge differences in behavior and performance through decomposing overall efficiency scores into multiple measures of efficiency; and (4) departments, in comparison with faculties and colleges, play a more significant role in the overall performance of the university. Resource allocation policy implications of the findings were also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the causal effects of the proportion of low-ability students in the classroom on the academic performance of regular students, exploiting random assignment of students to classes within middle schools in China. We show that the share of students in a class who are low achievers has a significant negative impact on the academic achievement of regular students in the seventh grade. The peer effects are heterogeneous along their achievement distribution, with the strongest adverse impact at the bottom end but no discernable impact at the top end. In contrast, there is no evidence that low-ability students influence any part of the achievement distribution of regular students in the ninth grade. Therefore, peer effects in academic outcomes can vary with the length of regular students' exposure to the same group of low-ability classmates. We further show that the differences in peer effects of low-ability students in seventh and ninth grades are driven by the adjustments of students' friendship formation and learning environment when approaching the completion of middle school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a field experiment to resolve the difficulties of quantifying personal appearance and identify a direct causal relationship between appearance and employment in China. The experiment reveals that taste-based pure appearance discrimination exists at the pre-interview stage. There are significant gender-specific heterogeneous effects of education on appearance discrimination: having better educational credentials reduces appearance discrimination among men but not among women. Moreover, attributes of the labor market, companies, and vacancies matter. Beauty premiums are larger in big cities with higher concentrations of women and in male-focused research positions. Similarly, the beauty premium is larger for vacancies with higher remuneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use idiosyncratic variation in gender composition across cohorts within Norwegian lower secondary schools to analyze the impact of female peers on students' educational choices. We find that having more female peers in lower secondary school increases the probability of choosing STEM over language subjects in upper secondary school for both girls and boys. It also increases the probability of choosing a vocational track instead of an academic track. Registry data and survey evidence suggest that potential mechanisms are related to relative performance in STEM subjects, as well as less gender discrimination for girls and increased willingness to compete for boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the relationships between test scores, truancy and labour market outcomes for youths. Our econometric approach enables us to disentangle the observable direct and indirect effects of truancy and test scores on the risk of unemployment or 'Not in Education, Employment or Training' (NEET) from their unobserved effects. Using data for England and Wales, we show that models of youth unemployment and NEET that ignore the correlation between the unobservable determinants of test scores and truancy will lead to misleading inference about the strength of their effects. Truancy has an indirect observed effect on labour market outcomes via its effect on test scores, and a weak direct effect. The unobserved component of truancy has a direct effect on labour market outcomes. Test scores have a direct effect on those outcomes, but also mitigate the detrimental effects of truancy. Our analysis raises important implications for education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding a set of units that can serve as a reference for growth or improvement in positions within a ranking is not a simple task, since each ranking method can place the same unit in different positions and may even differ in relative position within the ranking. This study proposes a method that applies a combination of network analysis and efficiency methods to global university rankings. Complex networks allow the creation of a graph structure that selects a set of units that change positions in consecutive rankings and also the selection of the set of nodes that are linked with a selected node. For this new set, it is possible to calculate the efficiency level using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), from which the benchmarks of the indicators for each of the selected universities can be computed. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology to find a set of universities that compete with any university selected from those in the global university rankings, in particular ARWU, THE and QS. Moreover, this work also proposes to estimate the efficiency level of each university that competes with the selected university using the Data Envelopment Analysis methodology in order to establish benchmarks for each of the target Universities. This methodology is replicable for any university in any ranking or set of rankings. Given the high volatility of rankings, this process can serve university policy makers in selecting indicators to focus on for improved results in the short term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using three household surveys, the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), the Working Person Survey (WPS), and the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), this study estimates the returns to postgraduate education in Japan, considering potential self-selection bias. To mitigate the bias, workers' undergraduate majors, types of university, and level of cognitive skills are controlled for. These factors explain 6.3–29.2% of the postgraduate wage premium for women, but at most 10.9% for men. Even after controlling for them, the postgraduate wage premium remains positive and significant, ranging from 16.5 to 23.7% for men and 13.5–26.4% for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We implemented an online anonymous survey targeted to current and former students, where the interviewed indicate whether and to what extent they cheated during written university examinations. We find that 61% of respondents have cheated once or more. Cheaters are more likely to report that their classmates and friends cheated and that in general people can be trusted. Two different cheating styles emerge: 'social cheaters,' who self-report that they have violated the rules interacting with others; 'individualistic' cheaters, who self-report that they have used prohibited materials. Only social cheaters exhibit higher levels of trust compared to individualistic cheaters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study a settlement policy implemented by the Chilean government between 1882 and 1904 to analyze the relationship between European immigration and the human capital of natives. Using historical censuses, I show that this policy was successful in recruiting skilled Europeans, who located in different parts of the country. Using a panel data of provinces observed between 1860 and 1920, I find a strong, positive, and robust correlation between recruited Europeans and the human capital of natives. This finding is not driven by changes in the provision of public goods or regional shocks. However, the arrival of Europeans is associated with an increase local economic output 50 years after the policy was terminated. These changes in the local economy, together with narrative historical evidence, suggest that a modernization of economic activities is a potential explanation for the increase in the human capital of natives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using macro-level data for 32 European countries, the present paper explores developments in the education distributions among solo self-employed workers and employer entrepreneurs in the non-agricultural economy over the period 1997–2014. Our dynamic analysis reveals that over this period, the number of solo self-employed workers, but particularly the high-educated solo self-employed, has increased considerably in Europe. This trend is even more pronounced for female solo self-employment. The education distribution of the solo self-employed is thus shifting quickly towards higher levels of education. Moreover, our static analysis based on 2014 reveals that, for the higher-developed countries within Europe (Western Europe including Scandinavia), solo self-employed and employer entrepreneurs are on average equally highly educated. We also find that the solo self-employed in Western Europe are considerably higher educated than their counterparts in the rest of Europe. In general, our results underline the rapidly increasing importance of, particularly high-educated, solo self-employed workers in modern, highly developed economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the gender gap in educational outcomes from different student assessment methods. I exploit a college application setting in which the centralized admission system allocates students based on a composite score, which is a weighted average of high school grade point average and a standardized test score. Using administrative data, I find that females significantly outperform males in high school grade point average in every subject, and not only on average but also at all quantiles. Yet the situation is reversed when it comes to standardized test scores: males outperform females in all subjects and almost all quantiles, with the largest magnitude of the difference in quantitative subjects and highest quantiles. Based on these findings, I argue that the gender gap is affected by the student assessment method used in a centralized system of college admissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent gender literature has highlighted that boys and girls devote their out-of-school time in dissimilar ways, which may differentially influence their academic achievement. Furthermore, this literature indicates that these gender differences may be rooted in society's gender stereotypes when using this time. To analyse this issue we employ longitudinal and census data for the Spanish region of Andalusia, making use of recent methodological innovations in the Oaxaca-Blinder gender decomposition technique. Our results have shown that girls outperform boys in reading, whereas boys get better grades in mathematics. We also found that there are no significant gender differences in the educational returns on time devoted to homework and that the gender differences in the time devoted to watching television and in the time devoted to playing video games and computer games narrow the female advantage in reading and widen the male advantage in mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of self-citation has received much attention in academia. Widely used and accessible tools such as Google Scholar do not provide information about self-citations. Therefore, a simple and practical back-of-the-envelope test for identifying researchers with strategic self-citations is proposed without access to self-citation information. It is shown that the h-index squared divided by the number of citations predicts self-citations. The test is simple to apply based on Google Scholar author profiles. Bibliometric data for more than 100,000 researchers worldwide were used to assess the proposed test. Test values of 0.35 or more indicate high ratios of self-citation while test values below 0.2 suggest low ratios of self-citations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the existing preliminary evidence of a link between Covid-19 and poor air quality, which is largely based upon correlations, we estimate the relationship between long term air pollution exposure and Covid-19 in 355 municipalities in the Netherlands. Using detailed data we find compelling evidence of a positive relationship between air pollution, and particularly P M 2.5 concentrations, and Covid-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths. This relationship persists even after controlling for a wide range of explanatory variables. Our results indicate that, other things being equal, a municipality with 1 μg/m3 more P M 2.5 concentrations will have 9.4 more Covid-19 cases, 3.0 more hospital admissions, and 2.3 more deaths. This relationship between Covid-19 and air pollution withstands a number of sensitivity and robustness exercises including instrumenting pollution to mitigate potential endogeneity in the measurement of pollution and modelling spatial spillovers using spatial econometric techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of our paper is to explore the extent to which the research collaborations could be an impact on the scientific performance of academic institutions. The analysis is based on data for 241 universities in Russia for 2015–2016 obtained from different sources: Interfax (privately held independent major news agency in Russia) National Ranking of Universities, monitoring of efficiency of activity of educational organizations of higher education (launched by Information-Computing Centre of Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation), and Russian Science Citation Index (largest Russian information and analytical portal in science, technology, medicine, and education and electronic library of scientific publications with 28 mlns of documents). We consider the number of citations of publications to evaluate university performance in Russia. To this end, we develop a non-overlapping generation model to evidence the theoretical idea of research externalities between academic institutions. Moreover, we implement different empirical models to test for the effect of external scientific collaborations on the institutional research quality by Federal District and scientific field. The results confirm an important positive impact of co-authoring process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural beliefs may affect demographic behaviors. According to traditional Chinese astrology, babies born on auspicious days will have good luck in their lifetime, whereas those born on inauspicious days will have bad luck. Using administrative data from birth certificates in Guangdong, China, we provide empirical evidence on the short-term effects of such numerological preferences. We find that approximately 3.9% extra births occur on auspicious days and 1.4% of births are avoided on inauspicious days. Additionally, there is a higher male/female sex ratio for births on auspicious days. Since such manipulation of the birthdate is typically performed through scheduled C-sections, C-section births increase significantly on auspicious days. Moreover, we use a second dataset to examine the long-term effect of numerological preferences and find that people born on auspicious days are more likely to attend college. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the roles of inward FDI and education in explaining country levels of entrepreneurship. It is widely recognised that inward FDI may have positive but also negative spillover effects on entrepreneurial activity. We argue that both types of spillovers (positive and negative) may be reinforced by high education levels of the labour force. Using a database across 75 countries between 2001 and 2015, we estimate a 2SLS model that tests for this moderating role of education. We find support for a negative interaction effect of FDI and macro-level education on the rate of entrepreneurial activity, suggesting that in countries with highly educated labour forces, inward FDI leads to more jobs in the wage sector rather than a higher number of entrepreneurs. Policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The measurement scale of exam scores is ordinal. This ordinal measurement implies that monotonic transformations of published scales convey the same information. Hence, countries should not be ranked according to averaged scores because there may be transformations that would change the mean-based rankings. We suggest alternatives to the mean-based ranking procedure that yield informative and robust rankings. An implementation of these procedures, using PISA 2012 math scores, suggests that previous mean-based country rankings are sensitive to the aforementioned transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use archetypoid analysis as a new tool to categorize institutions and faculties of economics. The approach identifies typical characteristics of extreme (archetypal) values in a multivariate data set. Each entity under investigation is assigned relative shares of the identified archetypoid, which show the affiliation of the entity to the archetypoid. In contrast to its predecessor, the archetypal analysis, archetypoids always represent actual observed units in the data. The approach therefore allows to classify institutions in a rarely used way. While the method has been recognized in the literature, it is the first time that it is used in higher education research and as in our case for institutions and faculties of economics. Our dataset contains seven bibliometric indicators for 298 top-level institutions obtained from the RePEc database. We identify three archetypoids, which are characterized as the top-, the low- and the medium-performer. We discuss the assignment of shares of the identified archetypoids to the institutions in detail. As a sensitivity analysis we show how the classification changes when for four and five archetypoids are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of a rigid cutoff date which determines when children start primary school creates a large heterogeneity in students' level of maturity within the classroom. We use rich administrative data of the universe of public schools in Catalonia to show that: (1) relatively younger children do significantly worse both in tests administered at the school level and at the regional level, and they experience greater retention. (2) These effects are homogeneous across SES and significant across the whole distribution of performance. (3) Younger children in our data exhibit higher dropout rates and choose the academic track in secondary school less often. (4) Younger children are more frequently diagnosed with learning disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decades, the (private) college sectors in the higher education systems of several European countries have expanded their capacities massively. This happened even though colleges have been at a competitive disadvantage with universities which are publicly subsidized, while colleges must self-finance through tuition fees. The question arises how, in equilibrium, a diverse student population is allocated between these institutions and which factors may account for the college expansion over time. Moreover, the efficiency properties of the resulting human capital accumulation process are of special interest. Our paper explores these questions within an information-based theoretical framework. Individuals are screened for their (unobservable) innate abilities, and the precision of the screening mechanism, which is endogenous, balances demand and supply of educational services. We find that in the short term, when the college capacity is fixed, the introduction of college subsidies is not desirable in most cases. In the long term, the college sector may expand excessively, thereby establishing inefficiently low screening standards in the admission process to higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Other CCNY campuses also reached the top ten, with the following rankings and residual mobility rates: CCNY (#3, 7.8 percent), CUNY Hunter College (#7, 4.4 percent) and CUNY Lehman College (#9, 4.0 percent). The HBCU's excelled at mobility, with highly statistically significant ( I p i < 0.001) differentials in mobility residual and a striking + $8,265 residual in graduates' income differential ( I p i < 0.001). The top ten residuals in Online Supplemental Appendix Table 2's first equation (showing greater mobility correcting for available resources) are a very different list from the usual elite top ten in academic rankings. [Extracted from the article]

One instrument regularly seen as a basic resource in assessing pedagogical knowledge and vivid learning in different circumstances is through the method of conducting student assessment appraisal of their instructors. Nevertheless, deciding the nature of instructional abilities requires as rationale and unbiased judgments. The concern is that there are no formal techniques or formulas that would prompt accurate responses from the students. In spite of the contention surrounding students' rating on instructors, this study aims to investigate how university students in Malaysia would evaluate instructors based on non-instructional factors, such as physical attractiveness and psychological factors, which in turn may affect students' perceptions towards instructors' performance. PLS-SEM was appropriated to perform the path modeling analysis. Practical implication is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of AStA Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistisches Archiv is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After a brief description of the four components of risk literacy and the tools for analyzing risky situations, decision strategies are introduced, These rules, which satisfy tenets of Bounded Rationality, are called fast and frugal trees. Fast and frugal trees serve as efficient heuristics for decision under risk. We describe the construction of fast and frugal trees and compare their robustness for prediction under risk with that of Bayesian networks. In particular, we analyze situations of risky decisions in the medical domain. We show that the performance of fast and frugal trees does not fall too far behind that of the more complex Bayesian networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship between occupational choice and unemployment over the professional career with German administrative linked employer–employee data that track more than 800,000 graduates from vocational education over 25 years. Using short-run fluctuations in local and sectoral occupation-specific labor demand as instruments, it finds that choosing an occupation that later turns out to suffer from low or negative employment growth has a statistically and economically significant impact on unemployment over the professional career. On average, an unanticipated one-standard deviation decrease in occupation-specific employment growth raises unemployment by about 116 days over the life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically analyzes the existence of intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial activity, from parents to children within Spanish families. We used data from the Survey of Household Finances (Bank of Spain) for the years 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2014, which allowed us to identify entrepreneurs as self-employed workers. The entrepreneurial activity of individuals was studied as a function of individual and parental demographics and labor characteristics. We found a significant correlation between the entrepreneurial activity of parents and children, which appeared to have remained unchanged during the last decade and the years of the economic crisis. Furthermore, the intergenerational transmission of occupation from parents to children was stronger for entrepreneurs than for employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate theoretically and empirically the impact of research collaborations on the scientific performance of Italian academic institutions. Data are derived from the international Scopus and Web of Science databases. We consider both quantity (the number of publications made in collaboration) and quality indicators from different databases (using indexes such as IF5Y (5-year impact factor of the journal, Web of Science), SJR (SCImago Journal Rank—key integral indicator of the quality of journals, Scopus), IPP (Impact per Publication, Scopus), AIS (Article Influence Scores, Web of Science), H-index (Google Scholar Hirsch-index metric) to evaluate the Italian case of scientific research. To this end, we develop a theoretical and empirical model to consider endogeneity of explanatory variables, the generalized method of moment estimation. The results suggest that international collaborations have a higher impact on the research quality index in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The information on academic performance rates—what percentage of the enrolled credits a student can pass in one academic year—showed traditionally a relatively low students' academic performance at Spanish public universities. However, over the period 2008–2014, the academic productivity of undergraduate students at public higher education institutions improved considerably. In this period, Spanish universities experienced changes related to the structuring of the educational curriculum—the homogenization of undergraduate university degrees—and the policy of tuition fees. In relation to the latter, the entry into force of the Royal Decree-Law 14/2012 (the so-called Decreto Wert) allowed universities a considerable increase in tuition fees. Using data for Spanish public universities for the academic years 2008/2009 and 2013/2014, this paper studied to what extent this educational law contributed to the improvement of the academic performance of undergraduate students. Using a stochastic frontier analysis for panel data, this paper showed that the increase in undergraduate tuition fees (first enrolment) acted as a catalyst in reducing the inefficiencies of the Spanish public university system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how changes in the unemployment rate affect demand for tertiary education, demand for different fields of university study and degrees' admission thresholds. We use panel data for applications submitted to every undergraduate program in Greece that span seven rounds of admission cohorts combined with a degree-specific job insecurity index, and time series on youth (ages 18–25) unemployment. We find that degree- and major-specific job insecurity turns applicants away from degrees and majors that are associated with poor employment prospects. Results indicate that the steep increase in the unemployment rate that started in 2009 is associated with an increase in the number of university applicants. The effect is heterogeneous across fields, with an increase in the demand for degrees in Psychology as well as for entrance to Naval, Police, and Military Academies, and a decrease in the demand for degrees in Business and Management. We also find that the business cycle changes degrees' admission thresholds by affecting their popularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is considered an important factor of economic growth, employment and social inclusion. However, the economic crisis has put the need to achieve educational goals in the most efficient way ever more to the fore. The main objective of this paper is to assess the spending efficiency of European compulsory educational systems, creating a ranking of countries based on the efficiency scores of their systems using a number of standard variables from the literature. To this end, we also present a methodological innovation that combines Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with discrete Multiple Criteria Evaluation (MCE), two methods that we consider complementary if used for providing a performance analysis. Moreover, both methods identify a set of common variables which are associated with higher levels of efficiency in educational systems (e.g. some characteristics of teachers, the stock of adults' human capital and lower expenditures per student). The results show that findings using DEA are largely confirmed by MCE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at investigating the effect of local government policy on the decision of secondary school enrollment in Indonesia. It combines various datasets such as Indonesia Family Life Survey based on the household and community survey, village survey (PODES), and district data level for statistical analysis. By using a probit model, this study finds that the local government policy on education, such as pupil-to-class room ratio and education expenditure per population in secondary school age, is found to have significant impact on the parents' decision to enroll their children in the school. Further estimation on the interaction of local government policy with female child shows that only the number of public secondary school per population variable has low impact on secondary school enrollment decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The system of higher education in Russia, as in many other countries, is in the midst of reforms related to the global trends of globalization and transformation to a knowledge economy. In order to successfully respond to these global challenges, it is necessary to improve the quality of the university sector and rethink the role of professors in enhancing academic productivity. A 20-year period of recession after the collapse of the Soviet Union has led to a diversification of universities and teachers and resulted in both a sharp fall in academic salaries and a decline in the attractiveness of the academic profession. Since the professoriate constitutes the main source of academic productivity, this article assesses the consequences of the decline in the academic sector before the start of major reforms of academic salaries. Using the data from the 'The Changing Academic Profession' project (CAP-Russia 2012 subsample), we identified and evaluated the activities of the professoriate that determine the income of university staff. The results show that, in general, the number of publications positively affected academic salaries, but for certain indicators of research activity, the effects are ambiguous. Administrative duties are important for academic salaries, with a positive effect ranging from 15 to 51%. Seniority also has a positive impact on a professor's salary. The most consistent results in the pre-reform period were obtained for National research universities (NRUs), where academic salaries are determined by research activity (articles in academic journals) and administrative duties. Salaries rise with seniority, which corresponds to the human capital theory (as well as alternative theories). Salaries in NRUs also reflect gender equality. The results of the study can be used to assess the consequences of the recession in the academic sector in Russia and as a baseline for analyzing current reforms in universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some education policy studies suggest that consolidation of public school districts saves resources. However, endogeneity in cost models would result in incorrect estimates of the effects of consolidation. We use a new stochastic frontier methodology to examine district expenditures while handling endogeneity. Using the data from California, we find that the effects of student achievement and education market concentration on expenditure per pupil are substantially larger when endogeneity is handled. Our findings are robust to concerns such as instrumental variable adequacy and spatial interactions. Our consolidation simulations indicate that failure to address endogeneity can result in unrealistic expectations of savings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between education and democracy with a focus on the recent political events of the Arab Spring. In this regard, we examine the effect of five different measures of education on democracy using a dynamic panel regression model for a sample of 15 Arab countries over the period 1990–2013. The obtained results indicate that education fosters the emergence of democracy. Our findings are robust with respect to various determinants of democracy and to the choice of the sample period, suggesting that increasing education expenditure and improving educational access and equality are key policy priorities to promote the onset of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]