Electronic Commerce,Trade and Tariff Revenue: A Quantitative Assessment

This paper assesses the quantitative importance of electronic commerce in trade and tariff revenue, in light of the WTO decision on ‘duty‐free cyberspace’. Electronic commerce is likely to boost international trade in software, digitizable media products (music, books) and many services sectors significantly. However, despite the growing importance of electronic commerce for trade, tariff revenue loss from duty‐free electronic commerce is unlikely to be significant.     

Unemployment,Government Spending and the Laffer Effect*

The paper studies the effects of income tax rate changes in a general equilibrium model with frictional unemployment. Laffer curve effects, by which a tax rate reduction may increase the level of government spending or its share in output, are shown to be possible under certain conditions. These are the presence of unemployment benefit payments, government budget balance through fiscal spending adjustment and limited quantitative importance of labour reallocation costs. Endogenous government spending acts as a fiscal accelerator if the fiscal burden of unemployment benefit payments is large, but reduces the employment effects of tax rate cuts if it is low.     

The cyclicality of consumption,wages and employment of the public sector in the euro area

This study empirically examines the business cycle behaviour of public consumption and its main components, the public wage bill (including its breakdown into compensation per employee and public employment) and intermediate consumption, in the euro area aggregate, euro area countries and a group of selected non-euro area Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (Denmark, Sweden, the UK, Japan and the US). It looks across a large number of variables and methods, using annual data from 1960 to 2005. It finds robust evidence supporting that public consumption, wages and employment co-move with the business cycle in a pro-cyclical manner with 1–2 year lags, notably for the euro area aggregate and euro area countries. The findings reflect mainly the correlation between cyclical developments, but also point to an important role of pro-cyclical discretionary fiscal policies.     

Virtually No Effect? Different Uses of Classroom Computers and their Effect on Student Achievement

Most studies find little to no effect of classroom computers on student achievement. We suggest that this null effect may combine positive effects of computer uses without equivalently effective alternative traditional teaching practices and negative effects of uses that substitute more effective teaching practices. Our correlated random effects models exploit within‐student between‐subject variation in different computer uses in the international TIMSS test. We find positive effects of using computers to look up information and negative effects of using computers to practice skills, resulting in overall null effects. Effects are larger for students with high socioeconomic status and mostly confined to developed countries.     

ANTIDUMPING POLICY IN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY: POLITICAL DISCRETION OR TECHNICAL DETERMINATION

This paper demonstrates the prominent role of antidumping laws as an instrument of endogenous trade policy in the EC. In contrast with the U.S. where anti-dumping decisions are largely subject to technical determination and trade barriers result from protectionist rules, the EC application of antidumping laws provides protection through administrative discretion and political influence on administrators. Whereas political influence seems to have increased over time in the U.S., the results of our empirical analysis of the EC antidumping decisions in the 1980 to 1990 period indicate that it has been curbed by the increased formalization of the antidumping investigation in the EC in this period. The estimation results show, however, that the tightening impact of each of the three institutional changes during this period faded within two years.     

Schooling,educational achievement,and the Latin American growth puzzle

Latin American economic development has been perceived as a puzzle. The region has trailed most other world regions over the past half century despite relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle, however, can be resolved by considering educational achievement, a direct measure of human capital. We introduce a new, more inclusive achievement measure that comes from splicing regional achievement tests into worldwide tests. In growth regressions, the positive growth effect of educational achievement fully accounts for the poor growth performance of Latin American countries. These results are confirmed in a number of instrumental-variable specifications that exploit plausibly exogenous achievement variation stemming from historical and institutional determinants of educational achievement. Finally, a development accounting analysis finds that, once educational achievement is included, human capital can account for between half and two thirds of the income differences between Latin America and the rest of the world.     

Herausforderung Organisations-Controlling — Entwicklung von Bewertungskriterien für die Aufbau- und Führungsorganisation

Ohne Zusammenfassung Prof. Dr. habil. Jens Grundei Professor für Betriebswirtschaftslehre, insb. Organisation und Personal, Fachhochschule für Oekonomie und Management (FOM), und selbstst?ndiger Berater. Dipl.-Vw. Ludger Becker Leiter Corporate Organization der Bayer AG und Lehrbeauftragter an der Technischen Universit?t Berlin. Bayer AG, Corporate Human Resources & Organization, 51368 Leverkusen     

What accounts for international differences in student performance? A re-examination using PISA data

We use the PISA student-level achievement database to estimate international education production functions. Student characteristics, family backgrounds, home inputs, resources, teachers and institutions are all significantly associated with math, science and reading achievement. Our models account for more than 85% of the between-country performance variation, with roughly 25% accruing to institutional variation. Student performance is higher with external exams and budget formulation, but also with school autonomy in textbook choice, hiring teachers and within-school budget allocations. Autonomy is more positively associated with performance in systems that have external exit exams. Students perform better in privately operated schools, but private funding is not decisive.     

Educational Production in East Asia: The Impact of Family Background and Schooling Policies on Student Performance

Abstract. East Asian students regularly take top positions in international league tables of educational performance. Using internationally comparable student-level data, I estimate how family background and schooling policies affect student performance in five high-performing East Asian economies. Family background is a strong predictor of student performance in Korea and Singapore, while Hong Kong and Thailand achieve more equalized outcomes. There is no evidence that smaller classes improve student performance in East Asia. But other schooling policies such as school autonomy over salaries and regular homework assignments are related to higher student performance in several of the considered countries.     

Schooling Resources, Educational Institutions and Student Performance: the International Evidence

This paper estimates the effects of family background, resources and institutions on mathematics and science performance using an international database of more than 260,000 students from 39 countries which includes extensive background information at the student, teacher, school and system level. The student-level estimations show that international differences in student performance cannot be attributed to resource differences but are considerably related to institutional differences. Among the many institutions which combine to yield major positive effects on student performance are centralized examinations and control mechanisms, school autonomy in personnel and process decisions, individual teacher influence over teaching methods, limits to teacher unions' influence on curriculum scope, scrutiny of students' achievement and competition from private schools.