Incentive Matters!—The Benefit of Reminding Students About Their Academic Standing in Introductory Economics Courses

In this article, the authors illustrate how incentives can improve student performance in introductory economics courses. They implemented a policy experiment in a large introductory economics class in which they reminded students who scored below an announced cutoff score on the midterm exam about the risk of failing the course. The authors employed a regression-discontinuity method to estimate the causal impact of their policy on students’ performance on the final exam. The results suggest that the policy had a significant impact on students’ performance on the final exam. In fact, the gain in test scores was sufficient to boost a student's overall course grade by one letter grade.     

Entrepreneurial Mind-Set Among Female University Students： A Study of University of Jos Students,Nigeria

In today＇s world, entrepreneurship is seen as the vital source for economic growth, and education in the creation and development of entrepreneurial attitudes. It is, therefore, natural to consider female students as the primary resource of future entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship as a career option is becoming increasingly desirable. Responding to this need, many colleges and universities around the world have significantly increased their offerings of entrepreneurship courses over the past 25 years. Entrepreneurship courses are not only offered by Business Institutes, but other faculties like Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Engineering, and Information Technology are also offering these courses in their syllabus. The problem under focus was to examine entrepreneurial mindset among female university students, a study of University of Jos. The study also ascertained the rate at which variables like： perception of entrepreneurship, role model and university＇s role to promote entrepreneurship are translated into entrepreneurial mindset of female students of University of Jos. A sample size of about 400 was adopted from the three Faculties of Management Science, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences which were selected at random. Furthermore, the data obtained were analyzed using simple percentage and presented in tables and charts, the hypothesis which states that there is no significant relationship between the teaching of entrepreneurship and university female students＇ entrepreneurial mindset which was tested using z-test analyses of population proportion earlier conducted. This implies a weak relationship between the teaching of entrepreneurship and university female students＇ entrepreneurial mindset. Based on the above inference, the research recommended that, as providers of entrepreneurship trainings, universities must create entrepreneurship supportive environment that could encourage entrepreneurial activity which would in turn help develop an enterprise culture among the female students.     

Do Professors’ Opinions Affect Students?

This paper estimates the effect that professors’ opinions have on changes in student opinions during introductory economics classes. The paper shows that students are more likely to change their opinion during the course of the semester if their initial response differs from that of the professor, and this result emerges even after controlling for students’ tendency to move toward the consensus opinion held by all the economics professors. Students are also more likely to change their opinions if they differ from the opinions of their classmates, and the estimates show that in the aggregate, classmate opinions matter more than professor opinions do. The data also show that students choose which section to attend at least partly based on how closely their pre-class opinions match those of the professor. These results have important implications for both heterodox and orthodox economists.     

The Motor Tycoon of The world

NewDeparturesTosecureapositionamongthetopglobalcompetitors,acompanyneedstobeabletoadaptswiftlytochangingcondi-nons.Thereisnoalternative.Businesses,processandstructuresmustberegularlyscreenedtoensuretheircontinuingfitnesstomeetever-changingchallenges.TheDaimler-BenzGrouprecentlyconductedacomprehensivereviewofitsbusinessportfolio,whichresultedinthePrevious35businessesbeingreducedto23.FOllowingthisstrategicrepositioning,Daimler-Benzisnowactiveinthefol-lowingfields:Passengercars,commercialvehi…     

The Bernanke Agenda

Cool,calm,and collected,Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is driving Wall Street batty.When traders scream about a recessionary "credit crunch," the former professor acknowledges their concerns but predicts contin-     

The Technical City-Quebec

CapitaloftheProvinceofQuebec，whichrepresentsanareaof1522563km2withapopulationofonly7millionpeople,thecityofquebecisastrongtechnologicalcenter,withauniqueandextremelyrichhistoricalandculturalheritage,locatedinamodernenyironmentwithanexceptionalqualityoflife.DesignatedWorldHeritageSitebyUnesco,theCapitalofQuebecanditsirnmediatesurroundingsisoftenreferredtoasthemostEuropeanofNorthAmericancities,andreprescntsaprivilegedlocationfromwhiclionecaneasilyaccessthenortheasternpartoftheNorthAmericanc…     

The Budget-Making Process

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The Quiets Americans

Since my daughter is graduatingfrom college today, I am thinking a lotabout the class of 2007 and the worldthey are about to enter. I'm not sure whatthey call this generation. Is it generation     

Market Structure And The Adoption Of Innovations: The Case Of The Spanish Banking Sector ‡

This paper is an empirical study of the determinants of adoption time for the teleprocess terminal by Spanish commercial and savings banks. The explanatory variables include the characteristics of the adopting firms, size, and in the case of the savings banks, the structure of the market and concentration. The results indicate that the speed of adoption is maximized at intermediate levels of size and market concentration, confirming one theoretical prediction of models of diffusion: namely, that adoption time is minimized at intermediate levels of market concentration.     

The simultaneity in human capital estimations： The case of China

Existing papers on human capital and growth in China has been using single equation estimations. This might cause a simultaneity bias if a two-way causality between the two variables exists. In this paper, the author performs vector autoregressive estimations using panel data on the number of graduates at each level of education as a proxy for human capital in China during 1991-2005. The results show that investment in human capital increases output per worker at all three levels of education. Regarding the effects of output per worker on the accumulation of human capital, the author finds mixed results with the primary-school graduates＇ benefits the most from increases in per capita output.     

The Next Big One

Where America is most vulnerable and how the nation canbetter manage the risks ahead Dr.Irwin E.Redlener is in Ba-ton Rouge La.,setting up mobilemedical units.He has been inLouisiana and Mississippi for manylong days helping people deal withthe horror of Hurricane Katrina,andhis voice is full of anger and despair.“The country is really just not pre-pared for a major catastrophicevent,”says Redlener.“Whatever itis—the Big One in San Francisco,aterrorist attack—it doesn’t matter.The…     

The Cost of Survival

Most corporations aren’t managed for change In the years of the late 1990s, no economic theorist looked better than Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian champion of capitalism who died in 1950． His distinction﹖ A theory he called“creative destruction．” The idea was straightforward: in with the new, out with the old． Companies had life cycles, just as people do． They were born, they grew up． And when a better competitor came along, they died due to capital starvation． It was the way thi…     

The Titan From Tucheng

Move over,Flextronics. For years,the Singapore giant claimed the top spotamong the contract man-ufacturers that churn out laptops,printers,cameras,and allmanner of electronic gadgets for the likes of Hewlett-Packard,Apple,and Dell.But a new champion is sweeping past Flextronics International Ltd.to claim the world title of No.1:Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.,alow-profile Taiwanese company based in the gritty Taipei suburb of Tucheng.In the cutthroat world of Tai-wan’s electronicsmaker…     

The Great Oil Hunt

For a sense of just how vast China’s energy needs are, take in the night views from the observation deck of Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower. From that perch 263 meters above the city’s streets, you’ll see a spaghetti jumble of bright neon illu-minatin…     

The Danish Welfare State

TheDanishWelfareStatehasbeenanexampleofhowitispossibletocopewithmarketeconomies,technologicalandsocietaldevelopment,and,atthesametimeensureahighdegreeofequalityandpublicdeliveryofcentralwelfareissuesascareforchildren,elderlyandhealthcare.ThishasbeenpossibletoachievealsoatthesametimeensureahighlivingstandardandacontinuousgrowthintheDanishEconomy.HistoryoftheDanishWelfareState(Greve,2002)showsthatacorereasonforthishasbeenthehighdegreeofconsensusachievedamongcentralactorsinthewelfarestatesdeve…     

The Mind Games Cybercrooks Play

The subject line in an e-mailthathitthousandsof in-boxesaroundtheworld lastmonth reads, “lawsuitagainstyou.”Inflawlesslegales,ethemessage warns recipientsthat theyrecentlysentan unsolicitedfax tothesender'soffic.e Citing U .S. civilcode, itsprohibitiono…     

The circulation physiology of agroecosystems

This paper represents an effort to enlarge the understanding of the biophysical foundation of agroecosystemsby using an analogy with the circulation of the blood in the human body. The circulation function in the human body canbe represented as arterial pressure. The factors affecting arterial pressure in the human body have direct counterpartsin the cultivation-husbandry system. The relationship between circulation pressure and the factors affecting that pressurein the cultivation-husbandry system are similar to the relationship between the arterial pressure and factors affectingarterial pressure in the human body. Furthermore, circulation resistance in the cultivation-husbandry system can beshown to be analogous to the calculation of peripheral resistance in the human body by Poiseuille’s formula.