义务教育法与中国城镇教育回报率:基于断点回归设计

利用中国城镇住户调查数据(2007—2009年),本文基于断点回归设计方法对1986年开始实施的义务教育法对个体受教育年限及教育回报率进行实证研究。本文的实证结果有如下三个主要发现:第一,义务教育法实施所导致的局部处理效应为0.4年左右;第二,基于断点回归估计的中国城镇居民的教育回报率为12.8%,高于OLS估计;第三,高收入群体的教育回报率高于低收入群体,表明教育在一定程度上具有导致城镇居民收入差距扩大的"马太效应"。本论文从定量上评估了义务教育法对促进中国教育发展的积极贡献,提供了研究中国教育回报率的新证据,并从研究方法上丰富了现有关于中国教育研究的文献。     

Rates of Return to Four‐Year University Education: An Application of Regression Discontinuity Design

It is invariably difficult to estimate the rate of return to university education, because of the problem of omitted variable bias. Using a regression discontinuity design, we estimate the effect of a four‐year university education on earnings, and we explore the pathways through which the effect operates. Our estimation exploits the centralized, score‐based college/university admission system in China, where the minimum scores required for university admission are externally determined by the provincial governments. Our findings suggest that being eligible for four‐year university admission implies a sizable increase in earnings. The payoff can be attributed to the prolonged length of education and improvements in education quality, although the quality effects cannot be precisely estimated.     

晋升激励与工业用地出让价格——基于断点回归方法的研究

本文结合土地交易数据和地级市官员数据,使用地理边界断点回归的方法,论证作为招商引资的工具,地方政府官员如何出于晋升激励调控工业用地价格。回归发现,工业用地价格与市委书记任职时间之间呈现显著的U型关系,最低点出现在5年左右。官员上任后,晋升激励逐渐增强,不断压低工业用地价格,当任职时间超过临界值后,晋升激励减弱,不再压低工业用地价格。进一步地,工业用地出让的规模、住宅用地的价格和规模与官员任职时间不存在显著相关性。这些结果说明了地方官员出于个人政治前途的考虑,针对工业用地进行价格调控。拓展分析通过比较相邻城市土地价格和官员任期时间差,发现城市间压低工业用地价格竞争的证据,并发现了省际边界效应的证据。微观数据和断点回归的方法克服了以往文献的内生性问题,揭示了工业用地价格偏低的原因和背后的变化规律。     

The Effect of Marriage on Education of Immigrants: Evidence from a Policy Reform Restricting Marriage Migration*

We investigate the effect of immigrants’ marriage behavior on dropout from education. To identify the causal effect, we exploit a recent Danish policy reform that generated exogenous variation in marriage behavior by a complete abolishment of marriage migration for immigrants below 24 years. The reform influenced immigrants from countries with a high historical rate of marriage migration more than immigrants from country groups with a low rate. We find that the dropout rate for males increases by 25 percentage points as a consequence of marriage to a marriage migrant, whereas the effect for females is small and mostly insignificant.     

The Age of Hiring and Deferred Compensation: Evidence from Australia

The factors affecting age of hiring are estimated using Australian establishment data. Lower ages of new hires are associated with training and with workplaces using steeper tenure–wage profiles. Lower ages of hires are associated with steeper profiles throughout the age of hire distribution, whereas lower ages of hires are associated with the provision of training only among younger hires. Moreover, the evidence confirms that larger employers are more likely to hire younger workers but that lower ages of hire continue to be associated with steeper tenure–wage profiles even among larger employers. The robust role of the tenure–wage profile suggests that it is too early to conclude, as some have, that specific training is the paramount reason for the reduced hiring prospects of the old.     

The causal effect of coalition governments on fiscal policies: evidence from a Regression Kink Design

Proportional election systems are widespread across countries and often lead to coalition governments. This creates interest in how the form of government (single-party or coalition governments) causally influences fiscal policies. It is difficult to estimate this causal effect empirically because the form of government is not randomly assigned to political units. I overcome this problem by using a Regression Kink Design which exploits that there is a slope change in the treatment probability at the 50% vote share of the strongest party. This method is applied to a large panel data set of German local governments. I find that contrary to the theoretical prediction, coalition governments significantly decrease expenditures.     

军事化训练可以促进团队合作吗?——来自公共物品实验的证据

本文采用实验经济学的方法,选取军校及普通高校大一和大四的学生作为研究对象,通过单轮公共物品实验,考察军事化训练对团队合作的影响。结果显示,军事化训练显著提高团队的初始合作态度。军校大四学员的合作水平显著高于军校大一学员,而地方高校大一与大四学生的合作水平没有显著差别。同时,地方高校大一学生与军校大一学员的合作水平没有显著差异,排除了军校学员的自我选择因素。     

国家优先支持政策促进绿色全要素生产率的效应评估——来自革命老区的经验证据

推进革命老区绿色高质量发展是新时代我国区域协调发展的重要战略任务,自2012年以来,国家出台了一系列支持革命老区优先发展的政策措施.为检验国家优先支持政策的影响效果和机制,文章以革命老区2008-2018年的数据为研究样本,运用PSM-DID方法,评估国家优先支持政策对五大重点革命老区的绿色全要素生产率的促进效应.研究表明:(1)国家优先支持政策显著提升了革命老区的绿色全要素生产率,促进了革命老区经济绿色高质量发展;(2)国家优先支持政策对革命老区绿色全要素生产效率的影响机制有三条,即通过智力资本投入、产业结构升级和生态治理实现的;(3)国家优先支持政策对不同城市绿色全要素生产率的促进效应存在异质性,即在工业化水平较低、人力资本水平较低和绿色发展水平较低的城市中的政策效果更强.为了进一步优化政策效果,要加大对革命老区的科技投入和教育投入、促进产业结构升级和推进生态治理,精准制定差异化的扶持政策,培育革命老区经济绿色高质量发展内生动能.     

企业家创新精神:来自企业家年龄效应的解释——基于2015年中国企业—员工匹配调查(CEES)的实证分析

本文利用2015年中国企业—员工匹配调查的数据,从企业家年龄的角度研究了企业家创新精神的变动,并分别采用OLS和3SLS回归,对企业家年龄与其创新精神之间的因果关系进行了稳健性检验。结果表明,企业家年龄和企业家创新精神之间存在显著的U型关系。通过进一步测算U型拐点发现,对于50.8~52.7岁的企业家群体而言,其创新精神显著低于其他年龄分组,存在中年创新瓶颈的问题。因此,应推动制度企业家向创新企业家的转型,增强企业家群体的换血功能,以助力中年企业家尽快冲破中年创新瓶颈。     

The Subnational Penn Effect: Evidence from China

In this paper we estimate relative consumer price levels as of 2008 for 36 major Chinese cities, using an innovative method purposely designed to rectify three main defects of the existing literature, which are (1) the under-representation of marketized services in the sample data, (2) biased consumption weights, and (3) a mismatch between sample classification and consumption weights. Our estimation results show the “subnational Penn effect” as defined by Tang (2012), i.e., strong inter-city correlations among population size, the relative price level, per capita nominal and real income, and human capital stock, thereby showing that the theoretical model of inter-city price dispersion proposed by Tang (2012) is applicable in China. Our conclusion, methodology, and estimation results have important implications for various aspects of the Chinese economy including the regional, urban and real-estate economies.     

Education and Fertility: Evidence from a Natural Experiment*

Declining fertility is often attributed to the increased education of women. It is difficult to establish a causal link because both fertility and education have changed secularly. In this paper we study the connection between fertility and education using educational reform as an instrument to control for selection. Our results indicate that increasing education leads to postponement of first births away from teenage motherhood and towards women having their first birth in their 20s as well as, for a smaller group, up to the age of 35–40. We find no evidence, however, that more education results in more women remaining childless or having fewer children.     

Inter-Industry Wage Differentials in Greece: Evidence from Quantile Regression Analysis

Using a consistent estimator of the covariance matrix of the asymptotic distribution of the quantile regression estimator with intra-cluster correlation of the error terms, the paper investigates whether and to what extent inter-industry wage differentials derive from worker heterogeneity in the form of unobserved quality. To conduct this study, we pioneer in utilizing a unique data set, the European Union Structure of Earnings Survey for Greece, which follows a two-stage random sampling approach of employees clustered within firms. Data refer to 2010 when the first elements of the economic adjustment programme to deal with the chronic deficiencies of the Greek economy and restore sustainable public finances, competitiveness and set the foundation for long-term growth, gained visibility. Results point to high wage dispersion across industries at the mean of the conditional wage distribution, even after controlling for personal and workplace characteristics. However, evidence for the unobserved heterogeneity hypothesis is rather scant. Therefore, there is room for efficiency wage or rent-sharing theories in accounting for a large part of inter-industry wage differentials tentatively implying that firm heterogeneity in the ability to pay matters more than employee unobservable attributes in the wage determination process.     

The Impact of Higher Education Funding on Socio-Economic Variables: Evidence from EU Countries

Education is an important vector of smart growth, sustainable development, and economic competitiveness. Higher education plays an important catalytic role in human capital development, and ensures a better insertion of individuals in the socio-economic environment. However, at present, it faces complex challenges in the context of public financing contraction. The aim of our article is to investigate the level of higher education funding and to reveal the impact it has on the socio-economic environment. The novelty of our article resides in the multifaceted analysis we propose combining both qualitative and empirical methods, in the comprehensive sample of EU countries, and in the large time horizon we consider. We first assess the relationship between public financial resources allocated to higher education and socio-economic indicators by means of an exploratory technique, called cluster analysis. Our findings reveal a pattern of similarity among EU countries by building smaller but homogenous groups. We then use the vector autoregressive method to complement the cluster analysis by providing further information on the strength, sign, and causal relationship between government expenditure in tertiary education and several socio-economic indicators. We perform an analysis for each country in the sample. Our findings are mixed, with some countries displaying a greater sensitivity of public financing (channeled to higher education) to changes in socio-economic indicators.     

The Export Promoting Effect of Emigration: Evidence from Denmark

Ethnic networks exhibit the potential to lower barriers to trade. The paper identifies the export‐promoting effect of emigration on the firm‐level using Danish data for the year 2001. Accounting for taste similarity, self‐selection and unobserved heterogeneity, three main findings are established. First, the elasticity of manufacturing exports to emigration is robust and of similar size as the effect of immigration. Secondly, only immigration encourages market entry but not emigration, suggesting that variable cost reductions and demand for home‐country products are the driving force of emigrant network effects. Thirdly, benefits from emigration accrue exclusively to low‐productivity firms.     

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.     

以基尼系数衡量的教育不平等与中国的实证研究

人力资本结构在经济增长中的作用已为人们所公认,而教育不平等是评价人力资本结构的重要内容。通过计算教育基尼系数得到我国教育不平等的基本状况。我国教育基尼系数从1982—2000年呈减少状态,与平均受教育年限和初中入学率负相关,同时人均GDP水平越高教育基尼系数越小。在整体教育不平等状况改善的情况下,以文盲率体现的性别受教育差异并未得到改善,甚至有扩大的趋向。