Fairness and inequality tolerance: Evidence from the Life in Transition Survey

This paper examines the link between inequality and individual well-being using household survey data from 27 transition economies, where income inequality increased considerably since 1989. A test of inequality aversion in individual preferences that draws on the Fehr and Schmidt (1999) specification of inequality aversion is proposed, and the difficulties of implementing it in a non-experimental setting are discussed. Estimates based on this model confirm aversion to inequality among individuals both in the pooled sample and separately among the EU and non-EU countries. The Gini index, on the other hand, is unable to capture this negative effect of inequality on well-being. Notably, inequality aversion is not intrinsic. Rather, it appears to be tied to a concern with the fairness of the institutions underlying the distribution of fortunes in society. The evidence is suggestive of inequality of opportunity driving attitudes toward overall inequality.     

教育不公平与马太效应：一个理论模型

从一个理论模型出发,指出民主社会中的马太效应具有内生性。因为社会的贫富差距导致人们接受的教育水平不同,而教育水平的不同又影响了人们政治决策的判断力。穷人有限的政策判断力限制了他们通过投票对政治决策的影响,因此,民主社会同样会存在不民主的政策。     

Reforms to Schooling in the UK: A Review of Some Major Reforms and their Evaluation

Abstract. We aim to give a brief overview of some important reforms to the school system in the UK and existing evidence on their consequences. These reforms include a change in the type of secondary school open to pupils – from a selective to comprehensive system; a change in the examination system; quasi-market reforms; area-based initiatives; reforms to the content and structure of teaching; payments to encourage the pursuit of education beyond compulsory schooling.     

Fiscal Transfers and Distributive Conflict in a Simple Endogenous Growth Model with Unemployment

Abstract. In the simplified formal treatment proposed in this paper, a decrease in a policy parameter – the ratio of total tax revenues to GDP – can monotonically increase long-term growth rate and may lead to a higher employment level. This notwithstanding, the paper shows that the redistributive implications of such a decrease may induce the wage earners to oppose it. As a consequence, policy-makers reflecting social preferences may undertake redistributive transfers generating persistent unemployment and lowering growth even if commitment technologies allowing them to follow preannounced tax policies were feasible.     

The French Educational System: Issues and Debates

Abstract. This paper describes the main features of the French Educational system and analyses the ongoing controversies surrounding pre-elementary education, grade repetition, class size reduction or educational priority zones in France.     

The effect of private high school education on the college trajectory

We use the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) to estimate the effect of private secondary schooling on the average college trajectory of a student in the United States, examining college enrollment and degree attainment across the private and public sectors. We provide the first estimates of the effect of private schooling on college degree attainment using the most recent NELS survey. To account for potential non-random selection we exploit the variation in the grade spans of the students’ middle schools. Results indicate that private schooling has a significant, positive effect on college enrollment and degree attainment. The effect on college enrollment diminishes with time, suggesting that private schools influence degree attainment by getting students to college sooner.     

Adaptability, productivity, and educational incentives in a matching model

We study the connections between the labour market and the education sector in a matching framework with ex-post wage bargaining. Workers have multidimensional skills and the search market is segmented by technology. Education is a time-consuming activity and determines jointly the scope - or adaptability - and intensity - or productivity - of individual skills. We establish three main results. First, unemployment provides incentives to schooling by raising the need for adaptability. Second, private returns to productivity are below social returns, but no hold-up phenomenon is involved. Third, due to wage and congestion externalities, private returns to adaptability exceed social returns. As a consequence, both over- and under-education may take place in equilibrium.     

The College Wage Premium and the Expansion of Higher Education in the UK*

This paper reports estimates of the UK “college premium” for young graduates across successive cohorts from large cross‐section datasets for the UK pooled from 1994 to 2006—a period when the higher education participation rate increased dramatically. The growth in relative labour demand suggests that graduate supply considerably outstripped demand which ought to imply a fall in the premium. We find no significant fall for men and even a large, but insignificant, rise for women. Quantile regression results reveal a fall in the premium only for men in the bottom quartile of the distribution of unobserved skills.     

A Theoretical Model of Financial Crisis

The paper develops a new model of private debt financing with an inefficient financial system at its core, where inefficiency is characterized by costly loan monitoring. The model suggests a mechanism that generates the following series of events: a period of low capital inflow despite high rates of economic growth (capital inflow inertia), as observed in the take-off era in the Asian tiger economies; followed by a sudden acceleration of capital inflow (as seen in the 1990s); and then by a crisis, which is defined as a large reduction in the amount of loans intermediated by the financial system (i.e., a large capital outflow or credit crunch). Under certain conditions, financial crisis can occur even when economic fundamentals and market sentiment change only slightly. Unlike most credit rationing models, the results presented here do not hinge on the assumption of asymmetric information. The model also provides guidance about the appropriate policy responses to an imminent crisis.     

What a Difference Immigration Policy Makes: A Comparison of PISA Scores in Europe and Traditional Countries of Immigration

Abstract. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the importance of different immigration policies associated with corresponding migration backgrounds, command of national languages and intergenerational mobility, for the PISA school performance of teenagers living in European countries (France, Finland, Germany, United Kingdom and Sweden) and traditional countries of immigration (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US). Econometric results show that the influence of the socioeconomic background of parents differs strongly across nations, with the highest impact found for Germany, the UK and US, whereas intergenerational transmission of educational attainment is less likely in Scandinavian countries and in Canada. Moreover, for all countries our estimations imply that for students with a migration background a key for catching up is the language spoken at home. We conclude that educational policy should focus on integration of immigrant children in schools and preschools, with particular emphasis on language skills at the early stage of childhood.     

企业中的职位晋升理论研究进展

企业中的职位晋升有两个基本功能,它们是职位分配和提供激励,但企业中的职位晋升往往无法实现职位配置的效率,职位晋升不足和职位晋升过度是职位配置无效率的两种形式。企业中的职位晋升的激励功能包括激励员工努力工作和激励员工进行专用性人力资本投资。企业中的职位晋升可能无法同时实现这两个基本功能,这时就会产生职位晋升决策的动态不一致问题,对这个问题的解决途径的研究相对缺乏而且具有明显的局限性,强制退休计划能否成为职位晋升决策动态不一致问题的解决途径是未来值得深入探讨的方向。     

Intergenerational Mobility under Private vs. Public Education*

Intergenerational earnings mobility is analyzed in a model where human capital is produced using schooling and parental time. In steady states more mobile societies have less inequality, but in the short run higher mobility may result from an increase in inequality. Starting from the same inequality, mobility is higher under public than under private education. A rise in income shocks, for example due to increased returns to ability, or a switch from public to private schooling both increase inequality. However, increased shocks raise mobility in the short run and do not affect it in the long run, whereas an increased role for private schooling reduces mobility in both the short and long run. That these differences may help to identify the source of changes in inequality, and other real‐world implications, are illustrated in a brief discussion of time trends and cross‐country differences.     

Examining the reliability of self-reported data on school participation

Many studies evaluate the impacts of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs on schooling using self-reports on enrollment and attendance even though there are reasons to doubt the reliability of these data. In this paper, we examine the extent to which school-age girls overstate their school participation. Using administrative data from a cash transfer experiment in Malawi and school attendance ledgers collected as part of the impact evaluation, we find that while all study participants overstate their enrollment and attendance rates, the extent to which this happens is significantly higher in the control group than the CCT arm. This finding implies that exclusive reliance on self-reported school participation data can lead to a serious underestimation of actual program impacts. We recommend that self-reports be supplemented using alternative sources of data on school participation that are appropriate to the experiment at hand — even if such efforts are likely to increase evaluation costs.     

小企业融资理论及实证研究综述

本综述主要围绕小企业融资需求、信贷配给及宏观经济政策冲击三方面的内容展开。严重的信息不对称以及所有者个人与企业的高度融合决定了小企业融资需求与传统理论之间存在着相当的差距 ,信贷配给问题在小企业当中表现突出。但也有观点认为 ,引入决定企业存活的真正因素———人力资本之后 ,新建企业并不存在信贷配给 ,这为相关政策的制定开启了新的思路。最后 ,由于小企业受宏观政策变化的影响较大 ,也需要引起有关部门的足够重视 ,以达到不同规模企业协调发展的目的     

The impact of teacher subject knowledge on student achievement: Evidence from within-teacher within-student variation

Teachers differ greatly in how much they teach their students, but little is known about which teacher attributes account for this. We estimate the causal effect of teacher subject knowledge on student achievement using within-teacher within-student variation, exploiting a unique Peruvian 6th-grade dataset that tested both students and their teachers in two subjects. Observing teachers teaching both subjects in one-classroom-per-grade schools, we circumvent omitted-variable and selection biases using a correlated random effects model that identifies from differences between the two subjects. After measurement-error correction, one standard deviation in subject-specific teacher achievement increases student achievement by about 9% of a standard deviation in math. Effects in reading are significantly smaller and mostly not significantly different from zero. Effects also depend on the teacher-student match in ability and gender.     

Cultural determinants of human capital accumulation: Evidence from the European Social Survey

Although economists commonly view the accumulation of human capital as a key driver of economic development, what drives cross-country differences in human capital accumulation remains poorly understood. I use an epidemiological approach involving second-generation migrants to test for a possible cultural gradient in individuals’ propensity towards human capital accumulation. Results indicate a strong relationship between country-of-origin culture and human capital accumulation and are robust to using years of education instead of individuals’ engagement in human capital accumulation as the dependent variable. Drawing on dimensions of cultural differences identified in culture frameworks developed by cross-cultural researchers, results further suggest that cultural emphasis on intellectual autonomy helps explain part of the observed differences in human capital accumulation. However, further work is needed to complete our understanding of the cultural roots of individuals’ propensity towards human capital accumulation.     

财政分权是否影响了公共教育供给——基于理论模型与地级面板数据的研究

1994年分税制改革在提升了中央财权的同时,却使地方政府事权负担加重。这种支出的财政分权可能使地方政府减少公共服务的供给,比如公共教育供给。文章首先分析了产生该现象的主要原因,然后构建理论模型,基于1996-2007年全国地级面板数据进行实证研究,结果证明财政分权确实减少了公共教育供给。文章进一步做了不同教育阶段和不同地区的对比。依据分析结果,文章对改进公共教育供给提出了财政体制方面的政策建议。     

企业多元化决策的一个理论模型

本文通过建立数学模型，描述了业务市场特征线的特征以及企业多元维度和规模选择与企业资源及市场特征之间的关系，并讨论了企业多元化决策的一般逻辑过程。本文目的在于为企业的多元化决策和从事该领域研究的学者提供一个基础性的理论分析框架。     

International comparisons of rural-urban educational attainment: Data and determinants

We study cross-country differences in rural and urban educational attainment by using a data set comprising 56 countries. We focus on the determinants of rural-urban educational inequality, which is measured by the ratio of rural to urban average years of schooling within each country. We find that riskier human capital investment, less credit availability, a colonial heritage, a legal system of French origin and landlockedness of nations are all associated with relatively lower rural educational levels and greater rural-urban educational inequality. Conversely, larger formal labor markets, better infrastructure and a legal system of British origin are associated with relatively higher rural educational levels and lower rural-urban educational inequality. We also identify an interaction effect between economic development level and some of these factors. In particular, we find that as development level increases, the negative (positive) relationship between French (British) legal systems and rural-urban educational inequality is reversed and becomes positive (negative).