Pro‐social leadership under authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is regarded as being unaccountable for people's needs, but few studies have documented how authoritarian countries balance their policy goals. China is known to use a promotion system to incentivize local leaders to develop the economy, while neglecting social spending. This paper documents that more leaders having a liberal arts background have been promoted as top provincial leaders. After carefully ruling out other channels, we provide evidence that the shift of top provincial leaders’ college educational backgrounds from science/technology to liberal arts/social science has increased fiscal expenditure shares on science, education, culture and public health and cut economic construction expenditures accordingly. The finding is mainly driven by the post‐1994 period, when local leaders had stronger incentives for economic growth. This indicates that Chinese top authorities are promoting more pro‐social local leaders when providing pro‐growth incentives in general.     

The wise,the politician,and the strongman: Types of national leaders and quality of governance

This paper assesses how national leaders’ quality of governance varies with their career and education. Using a sample of 1,000 rulers between 1931 and 2010, I identify three types of leaders: military leaders, academics, and politicians. Military leaders are associated with an overall negative performance, while politicians who have held important offices before taking power tend to perform well. Academics have on average non-significant effects. These results are partially driven by differences in policy decisions and in leadership styles. Military leaders spend less in health and education, are more likely to establish a personalistic regime, to disrespect the constitution, and to move towards a non-electoral regime, while the reverse holds for politicians. Additionally, this paper highlights the weakness of using educational attainment as a proxy for politicians’ quality, and of growth as a measure of national leaders’ performance.     

Rich or alive? Political (in)stability,political leader selection and economic growth

We develop a model that studies the incentives of the ruling elite regarding the selection of the political leader. We show that it is optimal for the ruling elite to choose leaders with more military experience in a politically unstable regime while more educated leaders are preferred in politically stable regimes. Using a dataset that includes 1569 national leaders from 177 countries over the period 1946–2011, we find empirical evidence that political stability contributes to the selection of more educated leaders, while the reverse holds for leaders with high military ranks. The empirical findings are robust to different subsamples, various proxies for educational and military attainment, and different measures for political stability. Our results suggest that leader selection is another reason why political instability is harmful for economic growth.     

Heterogeneous effects of merit scholarships: do program features matter?

This paper examines the role of program features in determining the effectiveness of merit scholarships on educational outcomes using data from the 2009 to 2014 American Community Survey. Exploiting the variation in the timing of program adoption as well as program features across states, I find that leniency of academic requirements for initial eligibility largely contributes to program effects on associate’s degree completion, whereas generosity of scholarship amount significantly increases college attendance and bachelor’s degree completion. The estimates also indicate that lower requirements for scholarship renewal appear to positively affect the likelihood of completing a degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields (STEM). The findings suggest that leniency and generosity are important determinants of program effectiveness on educational outcomes. It is thus relevant to take program features into account when designing merit scholarships.     

A critical competency: determining and communicating the number of nurses you must hire

Nurse leaders must understand and articulate critical concepts of budgeting and staffing to provide credible leadership to our nursing organizations. Determining the ideal number of nurses to hire on any given unit is as much an art as it is a science. Understanding the relationship between hiring requirements and the budget can lead your nursing organization to achieve important results for your hospital.     

Preferences for Educational Status,Human Capital Accumulation,and Growth

Using an overlapping generations model in which human capital accumulation has positive external effects on the production of the human capital of future generations, this paper analyzes implications of agents’ having preferences for educational status, represented by human capital holdings relative to the social average. Examining the value and sign of the optimal distortionary tax in the optimal taxation scheme, we analyze the efficiency of the level of human capital accumulation in a decentralized economy. The desire for educational status can compensate for insufficient accumulation of human capital stemming from human capital externalities directed toward future generations.     

On education,screening and human capital

The paper tests the hypothesis that educational attainment acts, inter alia, as a screening device for worker selection by comparing the average educational level of pairs of screened and non-screened groups within similar occupational categories. The results, based on Israeli data, support the view that strong screening effects are at work.     

Trade,educational costs,and skill acquisition

A model of heterogeneous agents is built to study the effects of trade and educational costs in shaping individual educational outcomes and their aggregate distribution. In a two‐country model, trade has nonmonotonic impacts on individual education choices and causes education and job polarization for both countries. We use this model to evaluate the effects of reductions in educational costs. A reduction in educational cost has no impact on occupational choice in a closed economy. In the open economy, however, it creates an expanded middle class in the home country, whereas the opposite happens in its trading partner.     

Child allowances,educational subsidies and occupational choice

This paper examines the effects on occupational choice and capital accumulation attributable to government policies of child allowances and educational subsidies. We show that multiple steady states may arise under these two policies, with club convergence occurring, and the initial condition being of relevance, if the tax rate of labor income for skilled labor is fairly high. Under a policy of child allowances, an increase in the tax rate is found to raise the quantity of children, but lower the quality of adults; however, under a policy of educational subsidies, with an increase in the tax rate, corresponding increases are found in both the quantity of children and the quality of adults. For developed countries, introducing child allowances may improve or hurt the welfare while introducing educational subsidies is welfare improving.     

Leader selection and why it matters: Education and the endogeneity of favouritism in 11 African countries

A large literature on favouritism argues that leaders favour their own ethnicity or administrative birthplace. We question the assumption that these leaders are exogenously selected for office. Using historical censuses from 11 African countries, we show that leaders are selected from more advanced regions. In other words, our sample shows that African leaders were created by colonial (and pre-colonial) institutions, which often meant large educational differences between regions. Our paper's historical perspective shows that these often-overlooked institutions can account for much of the variation in post-colonial outcomes. Favouritism was at least partially endogenous.     

Implications of a multi-disciplinary educational and research environment: Perspectives of future business, law, science, and engineering professionals in the technological innovation: Generating economic results (TI:GER®) program

Functioning well in a global, technology-driven, multi-disciplinary environment necessitates a more robust educational paradigm, especially in science and engineering. For a scientific education to be complete, it can no longer be restricted solely to technical areas. Similarly, law and business students will encounter a slew of technologies throughout the course of their careers. They will be required to comprehend the intricacies and corresponding implications of these technologies in order to impart their perspectives effectively and have an impact. In an effort to address this widely recognized need, a number of multi-disciplinary education and innovation programs have recently surfaced. Although several of these have been documented in the literature, the experiences of participants and the manner in which these will influence their future career plans as well as personal goals are not usually taken into account. Our focus in this paper is to shed light on this 'end effect' of being exposed to a multi-disciplinary education by stressing the importance of understanding social, economic, and legal aspects of science and engineering within the context of a scientific graduate-level education. Specifically, the authors take a closer look at the TI:GER^®1(Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results) program. Based on their experiences, the authors present their learning and insight on multi-disciplinary education in a mixed technical and professional degree setting.     

Courage, leadership, and end-of-life care: when courage counts

As leaders, we must feel a sense of moral obligation to implement evidence about end-of-life care in our practice setting. Nurse leaders can help patients and families orchestrate a beautiful experience that is an alternative to futile, expensive end-of-life care. Preparation is key in helping staff provide the best level of care. A plan built around the best care for patients can integrate with many diverse positions and people. Courageous nurse leaders are well adapted to maneuvering through political traps and advocating for patients and their families. Everyone benefits personally and financially, including our communities and nation, when courageous leaders advocate successfully for effective end-of-life care.     

Educational Attainment and Family Background

Abstract. This paper analyses the effect of aspects of family background, such as family income and parental education, on the educational attainment of persons born from 1967 to 1972. Family income is measured at different periods of a child's life to separate long-term versus short-term effects of family income on educational choices. We find that permanent income matters to a certain degree, and that family income when the child is 0–6 years old is an important explanatory variable for educational attainment later in a child's life. We find that short-term credit constraints have only a small effect on educational attainment. Long-term factors, such as permanent family income and parental education, are much more important for educational attainment than are short-term credit constraints. Public interventions to alleviate the effects of family background should thus also be targeted at a child's early years, the shaping period for the cognitive and non-cognitive skills important later in life.     

The communication and European Regional economic growth: The interactive fixed effects approach

Following the frontier framework of the panel data models with the interactive fixed effects, the study identifies the European regional economic growth determinants for 268 regions from 2000 to 2014. The regional communication might provide the supplementary positive effects on the European regional economic growth, where the population and educational attainment level are negative correlated to the regional economic growth. The regional human resources in science and technology remain the domination power as one of the regional economic engines in European Union after the millennium.     

中国农村地区的家庭成份、家庭文化和教育

本文考察了中国农村地区家庭成份的划分对家庭成员受教育水平的代际影响。考察地主/富农家庭出身的男性户主的受教育水平,我们发现它在毛泽东时代因成份歧视的影响出现了下降,而在改革开放之后又有所反弹。我们也发现,年龄在16—18岁之间的孩子中,地主/富农和中农家庭的后代具有较高的受教育水平。我们的结果表明中国农村家庭作为一种文化制度,其延续性和坚固性需要予以更多的关注。     

研究型大学教育科技创新能力体系结构及创新战略

分析了研究型大学教育科技创新能力体系的多元化、板块化结构,着重提出并强调了创新资源的供给和吸纳能力在研究型大学教育科技创新能力体系构建中的重要意义;提出并分析了研究型大学构建教育科技创新能力体系的战略选择,即实施开放创新战略、集成创新战略、创新人才战略和创新文化战略。     

The limits of policy: Public acceptance and the reform of science and technology governance

The adoption of a variety of new regulatory approaches and concepts, decision making processes and educational frames over the last three decades can be interpreted as an attempt to improve social acceptability of the process of science and technology governance. However, as argued in this paper, neither the introduction of non-standard scientific methodology and precautionary policy, nor participatory decision making, nor increased scientific-technological education are likely to significantly improve social acceptance of science and technology governance. Such reforms may shift the focus of ongoing policy debates, but do not lead to closure. In consequence, more research is needed on the complex relationship between acceptance, trust, information and participation, the implications of non-standard methodology in regulatory decision making, as well as the different interpretations that stakeholders may give to key regulatory concepts.     

Neighbourhood effects,preference heterogeneity and immigrant educational attainment

This paper investigates differences between the educational attainment of immigrants, children of immigrants and native-born individuals in Australia by using Australian Youth Survey (AYS) data combined with aggregate Australian Census data. Differences in educational attainment are decomposed into: (i) typical demographic and socio-economic sources common to all ethnic groups; (ii) unobserved region of residence and region of origin effects; and (iii) neighbourhood effects such as degree and ethnic concentration of particular ethnic groups in different neighbourhoods. A theoretical model incorporating these effects is proposed but structural estimation is not possible for lack of appropriate data. Instead, a reduced form methodology is proposed and employed. The empirical results identify positive ethnic neighbourhood effects in high school completion and university enrolment for some immigrant groups in Australia, in particular first and second generation immigrants from Asia. The results indicate that it is not just the size of the ethnic network but the ‘quality’ of the network that is important.