The Role of the Private Sector in Education in Vietnam: Evidence From the Vietnam Living Standards Survey

Since the move from a centrally planned to a market economy is recent, it is not surprising that private schools are rare. Estimates of the determinants of school choice indicate that better-off households are less likely to send their children to semi-public schools but more likely to send them to private schools. Willingness to spend on education increases as household incomes rise. In addition, the marginal cost to households of switching from public to private schools may be small. Given its importance in determining children's ultimate attainment, parental education should be considered in any targeting efforts.     

Effects of Japanese compulsory educational reforms on household educational expenditure

This study investigates the effects of the 2002 Japanese reforms of compulsory education on household expenditure on supplementary schooling and out-of-school activities for junior high school students. These reforms marked a dramatic change in Japan's compulsory education system in two main respects: from April 2002, every Saturday became a public school holiday and instructional time was reduced following the government's revisions of national curriculum guidelines, leaving private schools largely unaffected. Based on aggregate data taken from the Child Study Expenditure Survey, the difference-in-differences estimation—households with children attending public schools as the treatment group and those attending private schools as the control group—reveals that the 2002 educational reforms increased target household expenditure on supplementary education by 13% and spending on outdoor activities/volunteering, arts, sports, and cultural activities by 23%. Disaggregated analysis based on microdata taken from the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure carried out by the Bureau of Statistics further reveals that the impacts of these educational reforms were larger for higher-income households than for lower-income ones.     

Rural–urban differences in parental spending on children's primary education in Malawi

Using Malawian data, this paper answers two interrelated questions: are there rural–urban differences in the factors that influence the probability that a household spends or does not spend on own children's education; and are there rural–urban differences in the factors that affect educational expenditure if a household decides to spend? Computed elasticities indicate that spending on education by rural households is more sensitive to changes in income compared with urban households, suggesting that spending on education in rural areas is a luxury good. In both areas, a mother's employment and education has a larger impact on spending compared with those of a father. Urban households compared with their rural counterparts are more sensitive to the quality of access to primary schools. We find no evidence of gender bias in school spending in urban areas, but rural households exhibit bias in favour of boys.     

Des cours internationaux des produits de base aux défis de développement de l'Afrique

Résumé: Les consequences souvent dramatiques de l'evolution recente des cours internationaux des produits de base d'exportation pour les pays africains conduisent a se demander quelle peut etre la place de ce secteur dans le developpement a venir de leurs economies. La premiere partie analyse les mecanismes de l'evolution des cours en distinguant les facteurs explicatifs de court, de moyen et de long terme. Elle examine en particulier le r61e et la portee des marches a terme. La seconde partie degage quelques perspectives generales concernant les fluctuations pluriannuelles cycliques des cours et la position de l'Afrique sur les marches internationaux des produits. Elle pose alors la question de la releve progressive eventuelle du secteur des produits de base comme secteur generateur du surplus macroeconomique exportable necessaire pour financer le developpement. En fait, une vue generale et plurisectorielle de la dynamique des economies montre que dans la plupart des cas, ce secteur va conserver une place essentielle, mais elle souligne aussi la necessite d'une profonde mutation de l'agriculture et d'un relevement des revenus ruraux. Abstract: The often dramatic consequences of the recent trend of international export commodity prices for the African countries raise the question as to what could be the role of this sector in the future development of their economies. The first part of this paper deals with the mechanisms of the trend of prices by differentiating short, medium and long-term explanatory factors. The second part gives some general prospects concerning cyclical multi-year fluctuations of prices and Africa's place on the world commodity market. It therefore considers the issue of the possible and gradual take-over by the commodities sector as the generator of the exportable macro-economic surplus required for development financing. In fact, a general and multi-sectoral overview of the dynamics of economies shows that in most cases, this sector will play an essential role, but it also stresses the need for a profound change in agriculture and increasing farm incomes.     

Immigration and the path dependence of education: the case of German‐speakers in São Paulo,Brazil (1840–1920)

This article studies the path dependence of human capital accumulation in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It focuses on the impacts of German‐speaking immigrants on education through three channels: their share of the population in the nineteenth century, their on‐the‐job skills, and the schools they founded. Using a new dataset based on almanacs from 1873 and 1888, these effects are evaluated for the nineteenth, early twentieth, and early twenty‐first centuries. The article shows that the institutionalized demand for education of these immigrants, reflected by the establishment of schools, was their main contribution to the accumulation of human capital. The effect of German schools on educational levels required a period to mature and dissipated over time. Nevertheless, its influence was substantial at the beginning of the twentieth century, affecting enrolment levels in private and state schools, a result that suggests the existence of spillover and contagion effects. Moreover, current indicators for stocks and flows of human capital in São Paulo are strongly associated with their historical levels. At the same time, this path dependence is conditional on the type of school: while a positive persistence is found for the private system throughout the twentieth century, convergence occurred in state schools.     

Does productive microcredit improve rural children's education? Evidence from rural Vietnam

Whether increasing access to microcredit results in better educational outcomes for children’s education in rural areas remains an important but inconclusive topic in development literature. This paper contributes to this strand of research both theoretically and empirically. We develop a theoretical model where a representative household uses microcredit to fund its family business and maximises its lifetime utility. Based on the outcomes of its business, the parents make an optimal decision on the level of their children’s schooling investment. Solving the maximisation problem, we show that a household’s optimal education for its children is directly related to the level of microcredit. Empirically, we utilise the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) dataset from 2008 to 2016 to estimate the impact of microcredit on rural children’s schooling. We find that microcredit borrowing by rural households negatively affects their children’s education, which is more profound for boys than girls. Policymakers need to be aware of such side effects in designing microcredit policy and adopt auxiliary measures, such as incorporating a clause on children's education in the borrowing terms, to alleviate the negative impact on children’s educational outcomes.     

数字经济背景下互联网的使用对民营企业员工性别工资差距的影响——基于员工受教育层次差异化特征的分析

基于2017年中国综合社会调查的民营企业员工数据,使用稳健最小二乘回归与Oaxaca分解法研究发现:互联网的使用将对未接受过教育以及仅接受过私塾扫盲班/小学教育的民营企业员工工资产生显著的负向影响;互联网的使用将对接受过初中及以上教育的民营企业员工工资产生显著的正向影响;随着民营企业员工受教育水平的提升,互联网的使用对民营企业女性员工工资的弹性影响远超男性;互联网的使用将扩大未接受过教育的民营企业女性员工与男性员工的工资差距;互联网的使用将缩小接受过私塾扫盲班/小学及以上教育的民营企业女性员工与男性员工的工资差距。据此提出,应加大公益互联网使用培训力度,以提升女性的互联网理性使用水平、加强清扫虚假网络平台以防止受教育层次较低女性误入歧途、鼓励女性自主接受多元化再教育以提升自身互联网理性使用水平等,以缩小民营企业员工性别工资差距。     

Productivités et externalités des dépenses publiques en zone UEMOA

Abstract: The purpose of the present study is to estimate the public expenditure sector's respective roles in the ‘productive’ and ‘non productive’ components of the economy of WAEMU (West African Economic and Monetary Union) member states. An econometric analysis aims to reveal the externalities and/or relative factorial marginal productivity effects on the long‐term economic growth rate. It appears that public capital expenditure positively affects relative factorial productivity but public consumption expenditure has no effect on economic growth. The study confirms the productive contribution of public infrastructures on GDP growth in the WAEMU area. Résumé: L'objet de la présente étude est d'estimer les rôles respectifs des différentes composantes “productive” et “non productive” des dépenses du secteur public dans l'économie des pays de l'UEMOA. Une analyse économétrique vise à capter les effets de productivité marginale factorielle relative et/ou d'externalités sur le taux de croissance économique en longue période. L'analyse montre que les dépenses en capital public ont un effet positif de productivité factorielle relative alors que les dépenses publiques de consommation ne laissent apparaître aucun effet sur la croissance. L'étude apporte une confirmation de la contribution productive des infrastructures publiques à la croissance du PIB dans l'espace UEMOA.     

Home Schooling: An Alternative School Choice

There is a fairly large, evolving literature on school choice. This literature addresses the factors that influence the choice between schools in the public and private sectors. Overlooked by this literature, however, is the growing segment of school enrollment in home schools. This article empirically examines the decision to educate children at home. The empirical results suggest that the decision to home school depends on the expected quality of schooling the home unit can produce relative to that available from alternatives. More specifically, our results indicate that women's educational attainment helps explain home school enrollment, that greater heterogeneity of income within a public school district increases home enrollment, and that stricter regulations decrease home school enrollment.     

Stratégies de développement et ouverture sur l'extérieur

Résurné: Cet article examine d'abord la notion de strategie de developpe- ment: il en propose une definition et des criteres de mesure: la strategie de developpement, mode de developpement choisi par le pays, autrement dit ce qui ne resulte pas de I'environnement, est appreciee a travers divers indicateurs, dits de performance, de choix structurels et de choix instrumentaux. Les indi- cateurs sont mesures en purgeant les donnees brutes de I'influence de l'envi- ronnement. Abstract: This paper first considers the concept of development strategy, of which it offers a definition and measurement criteria. Development strategy is defined as the development pattern chosen by the country, that is to say the pattern which does not result from the environmental factors. It can be appreciated by several indicators of ‘performance’, ‘structural choices’ and ‘instrumental choices’, most of them measured by eliminating from gross variables the influence of the environment. This methodology is then applied to the study of the trade strategy. The ‘openness’ of ‘outward orientation’ is here defined and measured by the level of export-GDP ratio which does not result from environment. Environmental variables acting on the export ratio, as estimated by a cross-sectional analysis, are the per capita income level, the country size, and the mineral exports. This ‘revealed’ outward (or inward) orientation is compared between African and non African countries. Finally, the implications of an informal trade for the outward orientation index are discussed in the case of African countries.     

Do education vouchers prevent dropout at private high schools? Evidence from Japanese policy changes

Although education voucher programs for students attending private high schools have existed in Japan for decades, to date there have been no studies that examine their effectiveness. In this study, we estimate the programs’ preventative effect on dropout by using school-track level (academic or vocational) panel data covering all high schools in northern Japan. Prefectural governments have faced increasing dropout rates stemming from financial difficulties, and expanded the scope and amount of their private high school tuition support programs since the late 1990s. We use this variation to identify the effect of tuition support on students’ dropout decisions, controlling for initial academic ability of students entering the schools and unobservable school-track effects. We also apply the instrumental variable method to account for the possible endogeneity of policy changes. Our results suggest that increasing tuition support is particularly effective in preventing the dropout of private high school students on nonacademic tracks.     

The expansion of higher education and household saving in China

We examine whether access to higher education impacts household saving rates. A 2-period model of household saving decisions demonstrates why increased college opportunities induce households with children to save more. We examine this theory using survey data from Chinese households during the unprecedented education expansion. Using estimates of the change in the expected probability of college attendance, we estimate the effect on household saving rates by comparing households before and after the reform. We find that a 10-percentage point increase in the probability of going to college raises the saving rate by 5.9 percentage points.     

Korea's Cash‐for‐Clunkers Program: Household‐Level Evidence

This paper examines the effects of a vehicle subsidy program introduced in Korea in the wake of the 2008 global recession. I adopt a simple binary choice model to approximate a household's decision to purchase a new car and identify the policy effect using a difference‐in‐difference framework in which non‐eligible households serve as the control group. The estimation results are as follows. First, the subsidy program significantly boosted the overall demand for new vehicles, increasing the average probability of a new purchase by eligible households from 7.1 to 13.9 percent. Second, beneficiaries of the subsidy program were mostly rich households and those owning relatively new cars. Finally, the program effect on aggregate vehicle sales was not quickly reversed in contrast to recent evidence on the comparable US program.     

Abstracts/Résumés

We investigate how private information and monitoring affect the role of accounting quality in reducing the investment–cash flow sensitivity. We argue that access to private information and direct restrictions on investments are likely to affect the extent to which accounting quality reduces financing constraints. Our results suggest that, for financially constrained firms, banks’ access to private information decreases the value of accounting quality. We further find that, for both financially constrained and unconstrained firms, covenants directly restricting capital expenditures also mitigate the importance of accounting quality. Our results suggest that, when information asymmetry problems are likely to be the largest, accounting quality is most important. However, the importance of accounting quality is mitigated if outside capital suppliers have access to private information and is eliminated if they impose contractual restrictions on investment. We also provide evidence that banks’ access to private information reduces the cash flow sensitivity of cash and mitigates the importance of accounting quality in reducing this sensitivity. This additional evidence suggests that our investment–cash flow sensitivity results are not driven by measurement error of the investment opportunity set.     

Compétence et qualité des décisions de vérification*

Résumé. L'auteur étudie l'incidence de la compétence sur la qualité de la prise de décisions de vérification dans le contexte de la planification de la vérification. Contrairement aux chercheurs qui se sont, jusqu'à maintenant, penchés sur cette question, il mesure la compétence par rapport à des champs de connaissances précis. Il évalue la qualité de la prise de décisions de vérification en fonction de trois critères: la conformité aux normes de la profession, la conformité aux normes du cabinet et le degré de consensus parmi les vérificateurs. Dans l'ensemble, les résultats de l'analyse permettent de conclure que la qualité de la prise de décisions, au sens que lui donne l'auteur, est supérieure chez les vérificateurs expérimentés par rapport aux vérificateurs inexpérimentés. Plus particulièrement, il semble, en premier lieu, que les vérificateurs expérimentés comme les vérificateurs inexpérimentés possèdent un bagage de connaissances minimum et se conforment aux normes de la profession. En second lieu, les vérificateurs expérimentés se conforment davantage aux normes du cabinet, tant en ce qui a trait aux décisions relatives à la confiance à accorder au contrôle interne qu'aux décisions de corroboration, ce qui indique que les connaissances des vérificateurs expérimentés seraient plus approfondies que celles des vérificateurs inexpérimentés. Enfin, le degré de consensus chez les vérificateurs expérimentés est supérieur à celui qu'on retrouve chez les vérificateurs inexpérimentés en situation de vérification normale, bien que dans les situations plus inhabituelles, le degré de consensus soit plus faible chez les vérificateurs expérimentés.     

Returns to private and public education in Bangladesh and Pakistan: A comparative analysis

This paper documents wage differentials between private and public school graduates in Bangladesh and Pakistan. While evidence in support of a wage advantage of private school graduates in Bangladesh is lacking, Pakistani private school graduates are found to earn more than their public school counterparts. This finding has important implications for the current debate over the effectiveness of private schools in South Asia. To the extent the wage premium arises owing to education in private schools, our result suggests relative superiority of private schools in Pakistan and are consistent with extant studies that have assessed private school quality using test scores of students. The difference in the performance of private schools in the two countries, however, remains a puzzle. This difference, we conjecture, may be partly explained by the between-country differences in public policy towards private schools and, therefore, the regulatory regime facing these schools.     

Chinese household saving and dependent children: Theory and evidence

This paper examines the impact of family size on household saving. We first study a theoretical life-cycle model that includes finite lifetimes and saving for retirement and in which parents care about the consumption by their dependent children. The model implies a negative relationship between the number of dependent children in the family and the household saving rate. Then, we test the model's implications using new survey data on household finances in China. We use the differential enforcement of the one-child policy across counties to address the possible endogeneity between household saving and fertility decisions in a two-stage least squares Tobit regression. We find that Chinese families with fewer dependent children have significantly higher saving rates. The data yields several additional insights on household saving patterns. Households with college-age children have lower saving rates, and households residing in urban areas have higher saving rates and a lower ratio of education expenditures to income. However, having an additional child reduces saving rates more for households in urban areas than in rural areas. Our regressions also indicate that saving rates vary with age and tend to be higher for households with more workers, higher education, better health, and more assets.     

Human Capital and Hours Worked of Children in Cambodia: Empirical Evidence for Policy Implications*

This study uses data from the Cambodian Child Labor Survey 2001/02 (CCLS‐2001/02) to investigate the trade‐off between child labor and their human capital formation. It also investigates the determinants of child schooling and that of the income earned from child labor. This study finds that children's education is a significant determinant of their wage rate, which implicitly explains the logic behind the household's decision to allow a child to both work and study, and thus explains why parents keep investing in their children's education. We also find that non‐poor households and fathers’ and mothers’ education have statistically significant effects on child schooling. Finally, this study has found that if children's average working hours are below the threshold level of 22 h per week, then education is not affected. These research findings have policy implications for the human capital development of children, as well as for broader social policy in Cambodia.     

Strategic interaction between inter vivos gifts and housing acquisition

This paper models the interdependence of parental inter vivos gifts and children’s home purchases when informal care affects decision making. We use data from Japanese households who purchased a detached house in an urban area to test this strategic interaction. Considering both censoring and endogeneity of inter vivos gifts, which are identified by information on formal care, our preferred results demonstrate that inter vivos gifts do not significantly increase the purchase price of housing. Theory suggests that this occurs when informal care tends to be a heavy burden for children. However, subsample analysis of young home buyers indicates that the empirical results are consistent with the literature: children who receive parental gifts tend to purchase a higher-priced dwelling. One potential explanation is that relatively young adult children are less likely to take charge of care obligations, and accordingly, parental gifts are only expected to relax their liquidity constraints. Subsample analysis appears to indicate that the underlying motivation of parental gifts is influenced by the timing of children’s home purchase decisions.     

The Legacy of Serrano: The Impact of Mandated Equal Spending on Private School Enrollment

In Tiebout's idealized world, families would sort into homogeneous communities. Each family would get its preferred quality of public schools and there would be no demand for private schools. But limited public school options and a demand for religious instruction not permitted in public schools create a market for private schooling. Recently, many state governments have greatly limited districts' freedom to spend what they wish on education, often in response to court rulings to equalize education spending, such as Serrano in California. Funding equalization also affects the level of public school spending in the average state district; if this rises, as it has in many states, private schools become less attractive. Examining private school enrollment in 159 metropolitan areas in 1970, 1980, and 1990, we find that private school enrollments fall as average public spending rises and increase as public spending becomes more equal.