Wish you were here? Quasi-experimental evidence on the effect of education on self-reported attitude toward immigrants

We use European Social Survey and Labour Force Survey data from 2002 to 2012 to estimate the causal effect of years of education on European natives׳ opinion toward immigration, by exploiting the exogenous discontinuity generated by reforms in compulsory education in Europe in the 1940s through the 1990s. Our findings show that higher levels of education lead to a more positive reported attitude toward immigrants. We also investigate the mechanisms behind the effect of education on reported attitudes by evaluating both economic and non-economic channels. We find that higher levels of education place individuals in occupations that are less exposed to the negative effects of migration, although not in sectors/occupations where the share of migrants is necessarily smaller, suggesting that migrants and low-educated natives may be complementary rather than substitutes in the labour market. In addition, education alters values and the cognitive assessment of the role of immigration in host societies, with a positive effect on reported attitude toward diversity and on the assessment of immigration׳s role in host countries. Our findings suggest that education as a policy instrument can increase social cohesion in societies that are subject to large immigration flows.     

人文素养与民族精神

人文素养和民族精神是构建和谐社会的重要内容。人文素养对弘扬和培育民族精神起着重要影响和作用，弘扬和培育民族精神又体现在人文素养当中。实现中华民族伟大复兴，需要通过人文素养教育弘扬和培育民族精神。要针对高校大学生人文素养缺乏的现象，构建大学人文精神，加强人文素质教育，提高大学生人文素养水平，更好地弘扬和培育民族精神。     

浅谈人文关怀教育在马克思主义理论课教学中的运用——以《马克思主义基本原理概论》课为例

马克思的全部理论都洋溢着人文关怀的思想。从人文关怀教育与马克思主义理论教学的关系出发,在分析马克思主义理论课人文关怀教育现状的基础上,提出人文关怀教育在《马克思主义基本原理概论》课教学中实现的途径与方法。该研究对深入挖掘和大力弘扬马克思主义人文关怀的思想有一定的理论价值和实践意义。     

Aid, policy and growth in post-conflict societies

Countries emerging from civil war attract both aid and policy advice. This paper provides the first systematic empirical analysis of aid and policy reform in the post-conflict growth process. It is based on a comprehensive data set of large civil wars, and covers 17 societies that were in their first decade of post-conflict economic recovery. We first investigate whether the absorptive capacity for aid is systematically different in post-conflict countries. We find that during the first 3 post-conflict years absorptive capacity is no greater than normal, but that in the rest of the first decade it is approximately double its normal level. Thus, ideally, aid should phase in during the decade. Historically, aid has not, on average, been higher in post-conflict societies, and indeed it has tended to taper out over the course of the decade. We then investigate whether the contribution of policy to growth is systematically different in post-conflict countries, and in particular, whether particular components of policy are differentially important. For this we use the World Bank policy rating database. We find that growth is more sensitive to policy in post-conflict societies. Comparing the efficacy of different policies, we find that social policies are differentially important relative to macroeconomic policies. However, historically, this does not appear to have been how policy reform has been prioritized in post-conflict societies.     

基于学科特色的高校创业教育课程建设研究

面对当前严峻的就业形势,各高校积极开展创业教育研究。在创业教育课程建设方面取得了很大进步,但在创业教育定位、创业教育师资力量、创业教育教材、课程设置特色方面,还存在很多不足。为了构建完善的创业教育课程体系,需要针对不同学科,理工、人文、经管类学科的不同特点,有针对性地加以改进,完善高校创业教育课程体系。     

Austerity and anarchy: Budget cuts and social unrest in Europe, 1919–2008

Does fiscal consolidation lead to social unrest? Using cross-country evidence for the period 1919 to 2008, we examine the extent to which societies become unstable after budget cuts. We find a positive correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability. Expenditure cuts are particularly potent in fueling protests; tax rises have only small effects. To isolate the effect of policy decisions on social unrest we exploit variation in neighboring countries’ past fiscal policies.     

Altruism,Liquidity Constraint,and Investment in Education

In Japan and other East Asian societies, household educational expenditures per child (especially private tutoring expenditures) have increased sharply, perhaps to an excessive degree. This paper suggests a rationale for many families to invest extensively in education, whereas other relevant literature rarely addresses the possibility of excessive educational investment. Introducing altruism and liquidity constraints into a model in which parent and child interact for determining investment in the child's education, we show that educational investment may be excessive unless the family is profoundly liquidity‐constrained. Our result extends previous findings incorporating the Samaritan's Dilemma. We also discuss public policy designed to remedy the inefficiency in educational investment.     

Production efficiency of British building societies

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative efficiency of British building societies and to find out whether efficiency factor is the driving force behind the merging of small building societies. Efficiency indices for societies are derived from a 1981 sample of cross-section data. The results indicate wide disparities in efficiency. These differences are not related to the size of building societies, but apparently to managers' skill and motivation.     

On the cultural basis of gender differences in negotiation

We study how culture and social structure influence bargaining behavior across gender, by exploring the negotiation culture in matrilineal and patriarchal societies using data from a laboratory experiment and a natural field experiment. One interesting result is that in both the actual marketplace and in the laboratory bargaining game, women in the matrilineal society earn more than men, at odds with years of evidence observed in the western world. We find that this result is critically driven by which side of the market the person is occupying: female (male) sellers in the matrilineal (patriarchal) society extract more of the bargaining surplus than male (female) sellers. In the buyer role, however, we observe no significant differences across societies.     

The moderating role of culture on the benefits of economic freedom: Cross-country analysis

The implementation of pro-market policies and institutions is often suggested for enhancing a country's development. However, implementing pro-market policies and institutions has a mixed track record. Some have ascribed the bad results to the neglect of people's predispositions, often described as culture. In this study, we argue that successful implementation of pro-market policies and institutions requires that large parts of the population know how to use the resulting freedom in a way that can bring long term benefits. A panel analysis on a sample of 67 countries from 1970 to 2019 confirms this theoretical argument. We find that Long Term Orientation increases the effect of economic freedom on income per capita, whereas Uncertainty Avoidance weakens the positive relationship between economic freedom and income per capita. The policy implication is that the introduction of free market policies and institutions will particularly foster economic development in long-term oriented societies and in societies with low Uncertainty Avoidance.     

International flows of people and institutional change

International travel clearly increases human interaction over space and exposes societies to foreign influences, foreign ideas, and foreign institutions. Does international travel promote institutional change in a traveler's home country? This paper uses panel data from 149 countries to test the hypothesis of institutional change stemming from international travel. We generally find that foreign travel does not affect political institutions. In one sub-sample, we find limited evidence that international travel can be a determinant of institutional quality in the home country depending upon whether the home country is an autocracy or democracy.     

Cheap home goods and persistent inequality

There exists a large literature which shows that public education is favorable for growth because it increases the level of human capital and at the same time it tends to produce a more even income distribution. More egalitarian societies are also associated with less social conflicts, and individuals have a lower tendency to report themselves happy when inequality is high. Therefore, it is important to study the reasons why the elite opposes the development of a strong public education system. It might be that education is related to social status and a strong public education system might threaten the elite’s political power. We show that one aspect of social status is the specialization of skilled workers in high-paid jobs and the abundance of unskilled workers in the production of cheap “home goods” in the market, such as painting and cleaning a house, babysitting, and/or cooking. We emphasize the role of general equilibrium price adjustments to show that depending on the level of inequality, the elite might prefer an economy with a positive and “high” cost of education than an economy where skills are freely provided. We show that this result goes through even if the skilled wage is not directly affected by the ratio of skilled to unskilled workers. We also provide empirical evidence consistent with our theory.     

Is polarization bad?

The adverse effects of political and social polarization on government policies are empirically well documented, yet some democracies seem to cope well or even benefit from diversity. In this paper we develop a theoretical model to show how elections in polarized societies contribute to improve quality of government. We consider both polarization among citizens and political actors (political polarization), where the second is endogenously determined by parties competing to win the support of the majority of voters. We find that more heterogeneous societies are more likely to be politically polarized, but that the divergence of positions in the political arena helps the electorate control government corruption by raising electoral stakes. Our results, which are consistent with the findings of a substantial empirical literature, suggest that, when funneled into political competition, polarization may help improving quality of government and policies.     

Declining Returns to Education in Norway? Comparing Estimates across Cohorts,Sectors and over Time

We examine the role of the Norwegian education system in explaining the moderate and stable earnings dispersion in Norway. Estimating earnings equations for 1980 and 1990, we find that returns to education have been remarkably stable in Norway, also when we compare returns to education across different sectors of the economy. Our analysis controls for self-selection into education by using an instrumental variable technique. We estimate separate education earnings profiles for different cohorts to identify the effect on wage premiums of the large changes that have taken place in the Norwegian education system. The substantially higher level of educational attainment for more recent cohorts does not, cet. par. , seem to have a negative effect on educational wage premiums for these younger cohorts.
JEL classification: J 24, J 31, I     

FORGETFULNESS AND THE POLITICAL CYCLE*

This paper examines a mechanism that underlies both the political business cycle and the cycle in non-economic policies executed by politicians. We show that if rational voters suffer from forgetfulness (a noise in the memory). then government expenditure on the production of public good increases as elections approach. Hence, the model describes a cycle that is observed in the government expenditures of democratic societies. Unlike previous models, this model does not require that the government have information superiority over rational voters with respect to its competency. According to this model, incumbents transfer resources from the beginning of their terms of service and use them near the end of their terms. We also find that the less concave the production function, the wider the cycle.     

Educated dictators attract more foreign direct investment

Since political risk is greater in dictatorships than in democracies, this paper investigates the hypothesis that foreign investors scrutinize public information on dictators to assess this risk. It checks whether foreign investors use five relevant dictators’ characteristics: age, political experience, education level, education in economics, and prior experience in business. The study is performed on a sample of 100 dictatorial countries from 1973 to 2008. We find that educated dictators are more attractive to foreign investors. We obtain strong evidence that greater educational attainment of the leader is associated with higher FDI. We also find evidence that the leader having tertiary education in economics and prior experience in business is associated with greater FDI. By contrast, the leader's age, and political experience have no relationship with FDI.     

Education for all. A welfare-improving course for Africa?

In this paper, we argue that the case for universal compulsory education for sub-Saharan Africa might have been overstated. We capture the African situation through a heterogeneous-agent model, in which high costs of education relative to income and the skill premium cause the economy to stagnate in a low steady state with minimal educational attainment. We calibrate the model to available data from the sub-Saharan African countries to study education policies. We find that a tax and in-kind subsidy scheme that effectively redistributes resources from households with lower ability children to those with higher ability children outperforms enrollment-maximizing policies such as the abolition of child labor and compulsory education.     

The company you keep: Satisfaction with life,economic freedom,and preference-policy mismatch

We examine the interaction between individual preferences for markets and state-level economic freedom as it relates to Satisfaction with Life (SWL). Fundamental tenets of economic freedom assert that societies free of excessive government involvement are wealthier and, ultimately, happier; individuals who are allowed to pursue self-interest are argued to be more motivated and more productive, and so society as a whole is better off. Though there is substantial empirical evidence that freer societies are wealthier, the evidence connecting economic freedom and happiness is less clear. We explore the relationship between economic freedom and SWL at the individual level. We examine differences between personal preferences for free markets and state policy and how this ‘preference-policy mismatch’ is related to SWL. We then briefly examine the relationship between preference-policy mismatches and individual self-reported voting behavior, including implications for Tiebout sorting. This study is the first to focus on individual economic ideology, i.e. individual level of support for free markets, and SWL in the United States. Combining individual and state level data we offer improvements to prior studies in a number of areas including an enhanced measure of life satisfaction, a richer basis for examining left-right differences than simple political identification, and an examination of the effect of preference-policy mismatches on satisfaction with life. We find significant relationships between SWL and individual support for markets, state-level economic freedom, and preference-policy mismatch. Further, preference-policy mismatch is positively associated with self-reported voting frequency. We find little support for Tiebout sorting.     

Endogenous Public Expenditures on Education

We construct a model of the determination of public funding of education through majority voting. Households have the option of privately supplementing public education. Alternatively, they can opt out of public education completely and choose private education. We find that in general the single‐crossing property cannot be used to establish existence of a majority voting equilibrium. Numerical solutions of the model reveal (i) when public education inputs and private supplements are substitutes, private school enrollment is often zero; and (ii) the funding level for public education is very sensitive to the productivity of private supplements and the elasticity of substitution between public inputs and private supplements.     

Changing composition of human capital The Czech Republic,Hungary and Poland1

We show that business education/occupations have expanded and that technical education/occupations have contracted in the Czech Republic and Poland since 1990. We interpret these changes as an adjustment necessary for their transition to a market economy. We do not find the same pattern in Hungary, which we attribute to the earlier timing of its transition. We construct an aggregate model in which labour reallocates in response to changing demand structure. When calibrated with the Czech and Polish data, the model generates a large movement of workers with technical education and experience into business occupations in the early 1990s. The discounted sum of output loss due to the gap between the demand structure and the composition of existing human capital amounts to between 8 and 40 percent of 1990 GDP.