Industrial actions in schools: strikes and student achievement

Many jurisdictions ban teacher strikes on the assumption that they negatively affect student achievement, but there is surprisingly little research on this question. The majority of existing studies make cross‐section comparisons of the achievement of students who do or do not experience a strike. They conclude that strikes do not have an impact. I present new estimates of this impact of strikes using an empirical strategy that controls for fixed student characteristics at the school cohort level, and a sample of industrial actions by teachers in the province of Ontario. The results indicate that teacher strikes in grades 5 or 6 have a negative, statistically significant impact on test score growth between grade 3 and grade 6. The largest impact is on math scores: 29% of the standard deviation of test scores across school/grade cohorts.     

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE: A SOURCE OR SALVE FOR THE RACIAL ACHIEVEMENT GAP?*

Racial disparities in school discipline are believed to contribute to the persistent achievement gap between black and white students. In this article, I estimate the relationship between school discipline and achievement within a structural model, taking into account the spillover effects of disruptive behavior. I find that discipline has an overall positive influence on student performance and that the racial gap in discipline stemming from cross‐school variation in discipline policies is consistent with achievement maximization. Integrating schools can close both the discipline and achievement gaps; however, overall achievement is reduced since schools are less able to target their discipline policies.     

THE EFFECT OF GRADING PRACTICES ON GENDER DIFFERENCES IN ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

This paper adds to the debate about the sources of the gender gaps in student outcomes by highlighting explanations related to interactions between teachers and students. The evidence comes from the lower secondary school in Norway. The teachers' grading practices are the focal point of the analysis. First, it is shown that girls are exposed to easier grading than boys. Thereafter, evidence is provided that both boys and girls are negatively affected when the teacher practises easy grading. The boys' responses to easy grading are more uniformly negative than the girls' responses. Some exploratory analyses that make use of information about the students' school motivations are provided to make sense of these findings.     

Accounting for Cross‐Country Differences in Wealth Inequality

There is considerable cross‐country variation in levels of household wealth and in wealth inequality. This paper assesses the extent to which these differences can be accounted for by differences in the distributions of households' demographic and economic characteristics. A counterfactual decomposition analysis of micro data from five countries (Italy, U.K., U.S., Sweden and Finland) is used to identify the effects of characteristics on component wealth holdings, their value and their distribution. The findings of the paper suggest that the biggest share of cross‐country differences is not attributable to the distribution of household demographic and economic characteristics but rather reflect strong unexplained country effects.     

Teacher unions, teacher pay and student performance in India: A pupil fixed effects approach

This paper examines the relationship between teacher unionization, student achievement and teachers' pay using a cross-section of data from private schools in India. We use differences in student mark across subjects to identify within-pupil variation in achievement and find that union membership of the teacher is associated with reduced pupil achievement. We find no evidence this could be due to the unobservables not controlled for by this procedure. A school fixed effects equation of teacher pay shows that union membership raises pay and in this case too we find that remaining unobservables are unlikely to explain this outcome. We discuss the policy implications of the findings and show that the effectiveness of teacher credentials in improving teacher performance is linked to unionization.     

The determinants of entrepreneurship gender gaps: A cross‐country analysis

This paper uses aggregate data from the International Labor Organization and microeconomic data from the European Values Study to quantify gender gaps in entrepreneurship, distinguishing between gender gaps in employership and in self‐employment, and study their main empirical determinants. Our sample consists of 40 European countries and varies broadly in terms of institutional background since it includes several ex‐Communist countries. In the aggregate data we observe a gender gap in employers of 59% and a gender gap in self‐employment of 36%. These gaps have remained roughly constant in the 2000–2017 period, although there are wide differences in both their levels and evolution over time and across countries. Using microeconomic data, we find that the incidence of entrepreneurship, employership, and self‐employment among men is much larger than among women, consistent with the gaps estimated using aggregate data. Our regressions show that these gaps are still sizable even after controlling for a large set of control variables that include marital status, age, education, number of children, wealth, the participation of parents and spouse in entrepreneurship, values toward women, social capital, and prior unemployment. We identify important differences between the determinants of these gaps in ex‐Communist countries and in high‐income ones.     

The Minimum Economic Dividend for Joining a Currency Union

A two‐country model is developed to show how the optimality of a currency union depends on whether it brings an economic dividend in terms of potential growth and the Balassa–Samuelson (BS) effect (the steady appreciation of the real exchange rate due to cross‐country differences in intersectoral productivity gaps). The model shows that such dividend needs to be larger, the higher the BS effect, the smaller the size of the economy, the larger the cross‐country difference in the standard deviation of the supply shocks, the smaller their correlation and the larger the standard deviation of real exchange rate shocks. We calibrate the model to quantify such dividend as a function of plausible ranges of the parameter values. The results suggest that both the BS effect and the size of real exchange rate shocks play a key role in evaluating the optimality of accessing the currency union.     

LOST IN TRANSLATION? TEACHER TRAINING AND OUTCOMES IN HIGH SCHOOL ECONOMICS CLASSES

Using data from a 2006 survey of California high school economics classes, we assess the effects of teacher characteristics on student achievement. We estimate value‐added models of outcomes on multiple choice and essay exams, with matched classroom pairs for each teacher enabling random‐effects and fixed‐effects estimation. The results show a substantial impact of specialized teacher experience and college‐level coursework in economics. However, the latter is associated with higher scores on the multiple‐choice test and lower scores on the essay test, suggesting that a portion of teachers' content knowledge may be “lost in translation” when conveyed to their students. (JEL A21, I21)     

Student demographics,school working conditions,and teacher mobility

I analyse how the inclusion of working condition data influences the estimated marginal effects of student demographics on teacher mobility. Using detailed administrative data on public schools, combined with unique data describing teachers’ perceptions of working conditions, I estimate a model characterizing the multinomial outcomes of teachers choosing to work at different schools. By comparing the estimated marginal effects of student characteristics with and without incorporating detailed working conditions, I find that excluding these additional data results in overestimating the effect of student characteristics on the probability a teacher moves to a different school, but has no influence on estimated effects for the probability of leaving teaching altogether.     

关于高校教学模式的思考

在高校文科类专业教学过程中,长期以来形成的教师讲、学生听的模式并没有超越中学的灌输式教学方法。学生在成为被动的接受者过程中由对某门课程的部分内容不感兴趣发展为对大部分学习的课程不感兴趣。因此,在广大高校教学活动中,由灌输式教学向启发式教学转变应该成为新时期高校教育教学活动改革的重要发展方向。     

A Statewide Assessment of Precollege Economic Understanding and DEEP

Effects of various student, teacher, and school system characteristics on levels of student economic understanding and learning during the 1982–83 school year are estimated using a stratified random sample of schools from around the state of Indiana. Particular attention is paid to a binary variable indicating which schools are participating in the Developmental Economic Education Program (DEEP).     

Foreign Direct Investment and the External Wealth of Nations: How Important Is Valuation?

While the balance sheet approach has increased the focus on position data, differences in valuation practices for foreign direct investment (FDI) make cross‐country comparisons difficult. To enhance comparability, the IMF's Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual, sixth edition, which some countries have already implemented and others will implement in the coming years, recommends seven methods for valuation of unlisted FDI. This paper demonstrates that both the valuation method and simple differences in estimation techniques can fundamentally change a country's financial balance sheet. Using Denmark as an illustration, unlisted FDI equity liabilities vary from 22 to 156 percent of GDP when applying different estimation techniques, but just one valuation method, price to earnings. These measurement uncertainties can lead to important misunderstandings and affect policy recommendations, thus pointing to the need for further international harmonization. While the results are presented in an FDI context, the uncertainties also apply to other macroeconomic datasets, including national accounts statistics.     

INCENTIVE CONTRACTS AND TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY*

We propose a transactions cost theory of total factor productivity (TFP). In a world with asymmetric information and transactions costs, productivity must be induced by incentive schemes. Labor contracts trade off marginal benefits and costs of effort. The latter include, in addition to the workers' marginal disutility of effort, organizational costs and rents. As the economy grows, contracts change endogenously, inducing higher effort and productivity. Transactions costs are also affected by societal characteristics that determine the power of incentives. Differences in these characteristics may explain cross‐economy productivity differences. Numerical experiments demonstrate the model's consistency with time‐series and cross‐country observations.     

How important are school principals in the production of student achievement?

As school leaders, principals can influence student achievement in a number of ways, such as hiring and firing of teachers, monitoring instruction and maintaining student discipline, among many others. We measure the effect of individual principals on gains in math and reading achievement between grades 4 and 7 using a value‐added framework. We estimate that a one standard deviation improvement in principal quality can boost student performance by 0.289 to 0.408 standard deviations in reading and math, while the principal at the 75th percentile improves scores by 0.170 to 0.193 relative to the median principal. Our results imply that isolating the most effective principals and allocating them accordingly between schools can have a significant positive effect on reducing achievement gaps.     

Racial/ethnic match and student–teacher relationships

This paper explores the role of teacher race/ethnicity in the teacher-perceived relationships with kindergarten and early elementary school students. Employing a model with both student and teacher fixed effects, we discover a positive link between the racial/ethnic match and the teacher-reported relationships with students. Specifically, minority students tend to have closer relationships with their teachers when they are taught by a minority teacher. Our analyses also provide suggestive evidence that the effects on the teacher–student relationships could not be driven by differential racial discrimination between white and minority teachers. Particularly, white and minority teachers are not differentially biased in judging their relationships with minority students, implying that the source of the racial/ethnic interaction effects is likely to come from the role modeling of behaviors. Given the importance of the relationships between young children and nonparental adults in their early stages of life, these findings have crucial policy implications.     

How Does Foreign Direct Investment Really Affect Developing Countries' Growth?

Two main contributions to literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth are made in this paper. First, the paper examines the effect of FDI on economic growth for 44 developing countries using heterogeneous panel cointegration techniques that are robust to omitted variables and endogenous regressors. The main result is that FDI has, on average, a negative effect on growth in developing countries, but there are large differences in the effect across countries. Second, a general‐to‐specific model‐selection approach is used to systematically search for country‐specific factors explaining the cross‐country differences in the growth effects of FDI. The results suggest that the cross‐country heterogeneity in the growth effect of FDI can be explained mainly by cross‐country differences in freedom from government intervention, business freedom, FDI volatility, and primary export dependence.     

Individual teacher incentives and student performance

This paper is the first to systematically document the relationship between individual teacher performance incentives and student achievement using the United States data. We combine data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey on schools, students, and their families with our own survey conducted in 2000 regarding the use of teacher incentives. This survey on teacher incentives has unique data on frequency and magnitude of merit raises and bonuses, teacher evaluation, and teacher termination. We find that test scores are higher in schools that offer individual financial incentives for good performance. Moreover, the estimated relationship between the presence of merit pay in teacher compensation and student test scores is strongest in schools that may have the least parental oversight. The association between teacher incentives and student performance could be due to better schools adopting teacher incentives or to teacher incentives eliciting more effort from teachers; it is impossible to rule out the former explanation with our cross sectional data.     

CONTRADICTORY TRENDS IN GLOBAL INCOME INEQUALITY: A TALE OF TWO BIASES

Did global income inequality rise or fall over the last decades of the twentieth century? The answer depends on how cross‐country income comparisons are made. Exchange rate comparisons suggest that inequality rose whilst the purchasing power comparisons of the Penn World Table suggest it fell. We show that both measures of real incomes lead to biased international income comparisons. Exchange rate comparisons ignore the relative price of non‐tradables, whilst the fixed price method underlying the Penn World Table is subject to substitution bias. The contradictory trends are due to growing dissimilarity between national price structures increasing the degree of bias in each method. When we correct the income data to eliminate bias we find no compelling evidence of a significant change in world inequality.     

Institutional Features of Schooling Systems and Educational Inequality: Cross‐Country Evidence From PIRLS and PISA

Educational opportunities determine the intergenerational mobility of human capital and affect the distribution of earnings on the labour market. This paper aims at explaining cross‐country differences in educational opportunities by features of schooling systems. The theoretical model predicts that a greater differentiation of the schooling system as indicated by streaming and a large share of private schools decreases educational opportunities while more instruction time increases educational opportunities. The empirical results that are based on a difference‐in‐differences estimation approach to control for country‐specific effects support these hypotheses.     

How and Why Has Teacher Quality Changed in Australia?

International research suggests that differences in teacher performance can explain a large portion of student achievement. Yet little is known about how the quality of the Australian teaching profession has changed over time. Using consistent data on the academic aptitude of new teachers, we compare those who have entered the teaching profession in Australia over the past two decades. We find that the aptitude of new teachers has fallen considerably. Between 1983 and 2003, the average percentile rank of those entering teacher education fell from 74 to 61, while the average rank of new teachers fell from 70 to 62. We find that two factors account for much of the decline: a fall in average teacher pay (relative to other occupations) and a rise in pay differentials in non‐teaching occupations.