The Effect of Female Education on Fertility and Infant Health: Evidence from School Entry Policies Using Exact Date of Birth

This paper uses age-at-school-entry policies to identify the effect of female education on fertility and infant health. We focus on sharp contrasts in schooling, fertility, and infant health between women born just before and after the school entry date. School entry policies affect female education and the quality of a woman's mate and have generally small, but possibly heterogeneous, effects on fertility and infant health. We argue that school entry policies manipulate primarily the education of young women at risk of dropping out of school.     

“同时期说”的考证——关于复式记账起源论

一直以来，有关复式记帐的起源始终是会计学界考证的问题，对立的观点是古代罗马起源说和中世纪意大利起源说，而中世纪意大利起源说又被分成Toscana说、Genove说、Lom-bardia说、Veneto说等几类理论，这些理论都认为复式记账是在某一城市产生、并向其他城市发展而形成的，其中最有力的学说是1340年产生的Genova说，它认为由财务账簿产生的复式记账，并广泛传播于意大利的其他城市，但是，最近出现了这样一种理论，即复式记账并不是在一个城市产生的，这种说法并不仅仅针对Genova说，而是旨在说明复式记账是从13世纪到14世纪在意大利的许多城市同时产生并形成的，这就是复式记账起源论的同时期说，本从复式记账起源论的古代罗马论和中世纪意大利论出发，并对各个学说中对复式记账的定义加以确认后，尝试着对复式记账起源论同时期说进行初步考证。     

Schooling,experience and earnings: The case of an LDC

This is an application of the strict human capital model in accounting for income inequality in an LDC. Using individual characteristics of 1600 male Moroccan full-time employees, differences in schooling and experience explain about 70 percent of relative earnings dispersion. This result is based on the existence of an 'overtaking year of experience' occuring within the first decade of the working life of the individual. Furthermore, an attempt is made to isolate the rate of return to training from the returns to schooling by analysing the earnings of illiterate manual workers differentiated by the level of their skill. The results regarding the relationship between the returns to schooling versus training, the overtaking point, and the explanatory power of human capital variables are remarkably similar to those obtained in advanced countries.     

The Effect of Life Expectancy on Fertility,Saving, Schooling and Economic Growth: Theory and Evidence*

We construct a simple growth model where agents with uncertain survival choose schooling time, life‐cycle consumption and the number of children. We show that rising longevity reduces fertility but raises saving, schooling time and the growth rate at a diminishing rate. Cross‐section analyses using data from 76 countries support these propositions: life expectancy has a significant positive effect on the saving rate, secondary school enrollment and growth but a significant negative effect on fertility. Through sensitivity analyses, the effect on the saving rate is inconclusive, while the effects on the other variables are robust and consistent. These estimated effects are decreasing in life expectancy.     

外资银行进入对我国银行效率影响的实证分析

本文选取我国银行市场上占主要地位的14家银行1994-2004年的面板数据,就外资银行进入对我国银行业效率影响进行了实证分析.实证结果表明:外资银行的进入使得国内银行的流动性、非利息收入、经营费用和资产收益率降低,并使其资产质量下降,风险增加,但是技术外溢效应以及对国内银行盈利性的影响并不显著.而且,金融业的对外开放对国有银行造成的冲击小于股份制银行.本文还根据实证分析结果,提出相应的政策建议.     

Bankruptcy and Entrepreneurship: The Value of a Fresh Start

This article considers bankruptcy law design in a setting thatis appropriate for entrepreneurial firms. These firms are characterizedby a dependence on an owner-manager who is essential to thefirm and must be given incentive through an ownership staketo maximize the value of the project. In a relationship-lendingenvironment, the banks that fund entrepreneurs cannot capturethe gains from providing the entrepreneur with this stake, andthis leaves the entrepreneur emerging from bankruptcy with alarger debt burden than is socially efficient. In this setting,a "fresh-start" bankruptcy policy provides greater debt reliefthan the bank would approve voluntarily, and this generatesgreater social surplus. The results suggest the value of separateprocedures for small business bankruptcies that allow some mandatorydebt relief to preserve ex post incentives.     

States and Markets: The Advantage of an Early Start

In this paper, an index of the depth of experience with state-level institutions, or state antiquity, is derived for a large set of countries. We show that state antiquity is significantly correlated with measures of political stability and institutional quality, with income per capita, and with the rate of economic growth between 1960 and 1995. State antiquity contributes significantly to the explanation of differences in growth rates, explaining half of the differences in growth rates between countries like China and Mauritania, which are located at the two ends of the spectrum. It is also a good instrument for social infrastructure, which explains cross-country differences in worker productivity.     

Entry in contests with incomplete information: Theory and experiments

This paper studies entry decisions in contests with private values. Potential contestants observe their value and the common opportunity cost of entry, and make entry decisions simultaneously. Theory predicts that whether or not contestants are informed of the number of entrants prior to choosing their expenditures has no effect on entry or aggregate expenditures. We test these assertions in our experiments. We find substantial over-entry in both information structures. However, entry is higher when contestants are informed. Since expenditures do not, on average, differ across information structures, aggregate expenditure is also higher when contestants are informed. Contestants earn on average less than the opportunity cost of entry.     

中国乡村公共品的提供:连带团体的作用

在威权和转轨体制下，民主和官僚政治制度通常很薄弱，为什么处于这种制度下的政府官员所提供的公共品，往往还超过了足够维护社会稳定所需的最低水平呢？案例研究表明，即使正式责任制度很薄弱，非官方惯例和规则的约束仍然能够促使当地官员设立并履行其公共责任。而这些非正式责任制度由特定类型的连带团体提供并在全社区发挥其道德权威。在其他条件都相同的情况下，存在这类集团的村庄比没有这类集团的村庄更有可能获得较好的公共品供应。     

Dominant Firm Pricing with Competitive Entry and Regulation: The Case of IntraLATA Toll

In this paper, we develop a generalized model of a dominant firm-competitive fringe industry in which products are differentiated, costs vary across suppliers, and the dominant firm is subject to alternative regulatory regimes. The model yields an equilibrium condition that can be tested empirically using data on Bell Operating Companies' pricing of intraLATA toll telephone service. Estimation of a reduced form price equation provides strong support for the theoretical model. Of particular interest, the results suggest that dominant firm (Bell Operating Company) toll prices are driven down by the presence of actual and potential fringe competitors (interexchange carriers) when entry is authorized by the state. Additionally, the results fail to provide evidence that the introduction of incentive regulation or price-cap regulation has reduced intraLATA toll prices.     

Child Schooling and Work Decisions in India: The Role of Household and Regional Gender Equity

Abstract

This paper tests three hypotheses about how mothers' autonomy in India affects their children's participation in school and the labor market. To do so it extends the concept of mothers' autonomy beyond the household to include the constraints imposed by the extent of gender equity in the regions in which these women live. This study began with the expectation that increased autonomy for Indian mothers living in heterosexual households would increase child schooling and decrease child work. However, the results are mixed, indicating that mother's autonomy can be reinforced or constrained by the environment. The paper concludes that mothers and fathers in India make different decisions for girls vis-à-vis boys and that the variables reflecting mothers' autonomy vary in their impact, so that mothers' level of education relative to fathers' is not often statistically significant, while mothers' increased contributions to household expenditure decrease the probability of schooling and girls' work.     

The Effect of Foreign Entry Regulation on Downstream Productivity: Microeconomic Evidence from China*

We examine the cross‐industry influence of foreign entry regulation (based on a novel measure) on the productivity outcomes of downstream firms through input–output linkages in China. In contrast to the significant liberalization of the manufacturing sector, restrictions on the service sector remained stringent over the period 1997–2007. We find a powerful depressant effect of foreign entry barriers imposed on the upstream manufacturing and service industries on the productivity of downstream manufacturers, and this effect depends on a number of industry‐ and firm‐specific features. Our research calls for further investment liberalization (particularly in the service sector) in China.     

Public Good Provision and Ancillary Benefits: The Case of Climate Agreements

Several studies found ancillary benefits of the provision of public goods to be of considerable size. If these additional private benefits were noticed, they would imply not only higher cooperative but also non-cooperative provision levels. However, beyond these largely undisputed important quantitative effects, there would be qualitative and strategic implications associated with ancillary benefits: public policy would no longer be a pure but an impure public good. In this paper, we investigate these implications in a setting of non-cooperative coalition formation in the context of climate change. In particular, we address the following question. Would ancillary benefits if they were taken in consideration increase participation in international climate agreements and raise the success of these treaties in welfare terms?     

Schooling and household welfare: The case of Sri Lanka from 1990 to 2006

This paper looks at the effect schooling has had on household welfare in Sri Lanka during the 1990–2006 period, on average and across the welfare distribution. We account for the endogeneity of schooling using quantile instrumental variable estimation as developed in Chernozhukov, Fernández‐Val, and Kowalski ( 2015 ). We use pooled data from four cross‐sectional Household Income Expenditure Surveys. The results show that an extra year of schooling on the part of the most educated adult member in the household can increase welfare (proxied by real per capita consumption expenditure) by 3.8 percent on average. However, the effect varies considerably across the welfare distribution: At the lower end, around the 20th and 25th quantiles, an extra year of education increases welfare by 6 and 5 percent, respectively, while at the median it is around 3.5 percent. At the higher, 90th quantile it is much less, at 1 percent. Thus the marginal effect of schooling on welfare is significant and positive at all levels of the welfare distribution, but highest at the lower and middle quartiles. This result is different from findings in the literature that tend to show larger effects at higher quantiles, when endogeneity is uncorrected.     

论知识经济时代科学技术对行政权的影响

21世纪是知识经济时代,科学技术的影响已渗透到社会生活的各个方面。而行政权是调控社会的主要公共权力。因此,科学技术对行政权的影响是全方位的,主要表现在行政权理念的更新、行政权生存空间的拓展、行政权结构的改变和行政权控制机制的变革等几个方面。     

Why Young Boys Stumble: Early Tracking,Age and Gender Bias in the German School System

Abstract. After primary school, German pupils are given a secondary school track recommendation. This recommendation and the actual track choice are strongly associated with later life outcomes. Using data from the German PISA 2000 extension study, we analyze the effect of relative age on track recommendations and actual choice. Younger pupils and boys are less likely to be recommended to and enrolled in the academic track (Gymnasium), the most attractive track in terms of later life outcomes. Flexible enrollment and grade retention partly offset these effects. We find no convincing evidence that postponing the recommendation by lengthening primary school by 2 years reduces the age or gender bias.     

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.     

“扶教育之贫”的增智和增收效应——对20世纪90年代“国家贫困地区义务教育工程”的评估

本文基于2013年CHIP数据,运用截面数据双差法,评估了20世纪90年代中期二片地区"国家贫困地区义务教育工程"的政策效果,对此提供了来自中国的经验证据。研究发现,通过新建或改扩建小学与初中校舍、购置教学设备等措施,该工程较好地实现了"增智"的目标:受益儿童成年后的受教育年限显著提高0.7年左右;但工程的"增收"效果却十分有限,受益儿童成年后收入并未显著提高。计量分析发现,工程虽能提高受益儿童成年后外出务工收入水平,但未能提升其外出务工概率;可能受限于本地第二、第三产业发展滞后,成年后留在本地的受益群体从事非农职业的概率反而显著降低。这说明,中国的"扶教育之贫"政策,能够有效促进贫困地区基础教育发展,但要达到教育扶贫"增收"的根本目标,还需要积极引导外出务工、发展本地第二、第三产业等政策与之配套。     

Entry and Competition in the Postal Market: Foundations for the Construction of Entry Scenarios*

This paper presents a model of entry and imperfect competition, which is inspired by the product differentiation literature and incorporates facts pertaining to the postal sector. There are two operators: incumbent and potential entrant. The entrant offers only one of the products (commercial mail) with a specific technology and delivers only to part of the addressees (located in low cost areas). Its degree of coverage is viewed as a quality attribute; it affects demand and hence market share. The incumbent faces a USO while the entrant is an unregulated profit maximizing firm. To illustrate the potential applications of our approach, we provide some numerical simulations of entry scenarios.     

城镇居民教育收益率的地区差异及其解释

利用中国社会科学院经济研究所"中国城乡居民收入分配"课题组1995年和2002年的家庭抽样调查数据,本文使用分层线性模型重新估计了1995年、2002年我国居民的教育收益率,得到了不同于OLS估计的结果:(1)我国城镇居民教育收益率的地区差异很大,差异主要来源于省内各城市之间,来源于省间的差别并不显著;(2)计算了省内城市劳动力市场化程度对当地教育收益率的边际影响,发现劳动力市场的发育确实有利于提高教育收益率,而且劳动力市场化程度的差异在一定程度上为各地教育收益率的差异提供了解释。