SCHOOLING FOR MONEY: SWEDISH EDUCATION REFORM AND THE ROLE OF THE PROFIT MOTIVE

This paper analyses quantitative evidence on the performance of for‐profit schools in Sweden. It finds that school competition improved educational attainment and conditions for teachers. The benefits of competition were enhanced by the high number of for‐profit schools that were established.     

不以利小而不为不以器小而不精--梁伯强的品牌战略

梁伯强简历　　广东中山小榄镇人,1962年生,高中学历;1978进入当年的全国名牌企业固力锁厂;1980年下海练摊;1986年创办聚龙工艺品厂;1998年生产指甲钳;2000年“非常小器·圣雅伦”牌指甲钳成为国内指甲钳第一品牌。“宁做蚂蚁腿,不做麻雀嘴。蚂蚁腿虽小,也是肉。一只蚂蚁谈不上什么力量,但100万只蚂蚁组成的军团却可以横扫亚马逊热带雨林,所向无敌。”广东中山小榄镇——中国五金之乡,有个叫梁伯强的人,他把“圣雅伦”牌的指甲钳作红了大江南北,跃居同行业中国第一、世界第三的位置。正是这小得不能再小的指甲钳,给梁伯强带来了巨大财富。“…     

PROBLEMS OF PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE USA: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

High costs and low graduation rates characteristic of 21^st‐century US public higher education stem from the bout of rent‐seeking attributable to the post‐Sputnik explosion in research spending and the consequent crusade to enrol new students, with diminishing concern for academic aptitude. New policies that tighten admission standards, encourage earlier graduation and enhance financial aid for the truly needy would constructively address these problems, as would incentives for faculty members to curtail outside consulting.     

THE LIMITS TO EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT: PROFIT SHARING AND DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

This article seeks to exsplore the ways in which profit sharing is used by employers as a means of securing more employoee involvement. Although this is the main reason employeras have gilven for introducing profit sharing, and has been a principal objective of the government's recent initiative over profitrelated pay, the evidence suggests that little so far has been achieved. By examining employers’deeep seated concerns about some of the implications of profit sharing, particularly those that involve disclosure of information, this article argues that employers are reluctant to pursue such a strategy of involvement because of the risk of stimulating employees to demand greater influence in how the enterprise is managed. This prompts a consideration of the conceptual ambiguity surrounding the notion of employee involvement, and the article concludes that the contradicatory implications this entails for employers renders it largely impotent except at the level of rhetoric     

TEACHING PARADIGM SHIFTING IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION: UNIVERSITY BUSINESS SCHOOLS AND THE ENTREPRENEURIAL IMAGINATION

This paper argues that the cultivation of the 'entrepreneurial imagination' is the singular most important contribution university business schools can make to the business community. Instead of the prevalent emphasis on the vocationalizing of business/management programmes in order to make them more 'relevant', university business schools should adopt a deliberate educational strategy that privileges the 'weakening' of thought processes so as to encourage and stimulate the entrepreneurial imagination. This requires a radical shift in pedagogical priorities away from teaching analytical problem-solving skills to cultivating a 'paradigm-shifting' mentality. This, in turn, requires that management academics themselves engage in the practice of what is termed here 'intellectual entrepreneurship'. It is through this academic practice that management educators can become skilled in the art of crafting relationship between sets of apparently disparate ideas and of thus bringing alive the facts they are attempting to impart. Only when such facts are embellished and illuminated by a mind possessing an intimate sense for the power and beauty of ideas and the bearing of one set of ideas on another, can they become pregnant with meaning and therefore able to excite the entrepreneurial imagination. It is argued here that recourse to literature and the arts provides new avenues for exploring relational patterns and frames of understanding, as well as the micro-logics of perceptual organization, necessary for cultivating a critical sensitivity to hidden assumptions and subtle relationships in social situations which lend themselves to entrepreneurial interventions.     

THE ORANGE BOOK,EDUCATION AND SOCIAL MOBILITY

Education policy was a vital theme of The Orange Book, even though there was no dedicated chapter. The book's commitment to using economically liberal means to deliver social liberal ends was the basis for a substantial repositioning of Liberal Democrat education policy ahead of the General Election, paving the way for agreement with the Conservatives on radical reform of educational delivery. At the same time, the Liberal commitment to education as the key driver of social justice, based on arguments of positive freedom, underpinned the party's election commitment to increasing resources for the most disadvantaged pupils through the Pupil Premium. This Liberal commitment to positive freedom and education distinguishes it from the welfarist bias of Fabianism; it was a key divide in progressive tradition in the 19th century and the division has endured to this day, reflected in the contrast between the welfarism of Gordon Brown and the social mobility agenda of the coalition.     

MATERNAL EDUCATION AND CHILD ATTAINMENT IN JAMAICA: TESTING THE BARGAINING POWER HYPOTHESIS†

In a bargaining model of household decision-making, any variable reflecting the outside opportunities of household members will influence household demand patterns. Mother's education has been found to be an important determinant of children's education and health outcomes. This paper argues that within a bargaining framework, mother's education may influence children's health and education by shifting bargaining power within the household. An empirical strategy is developed and applied to data on teenage grade attainment and school enrolment in Jamaica. The results support the bargaining power hypothesis, and imply a broader role for mother's education than has previously been considered.     

THE BROKEN UNIVERSITY: WHAT IS SEEN AND WHAT IS NOT SEEN IN THE UK HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR

Frederic Bastiat and others have previously argued that one of the key differences between a good and a bad economist is whether they are prepared to take into account not just the immediate and visible effects of a policy intervention, but also the hidden costs and unintended consequences which accumulate over time. In the field of higher education, when these additional factors are taken into account it soon becomes clear that the £14.3 billion annual public subsidy is now doing more harm than good in one of the UK's most important service sectors.     

FINANCIAL EDUCATION AND BEHAVIORAL FINANCE: NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE ROLE OF INFORMATION IN FINANCIAL DECISIONS

Recent empirical evidence based on surveys and experimental activities within the fields of behavioral finance and financial education has offered economists new empirically based insights into how individuals use information in making financial decisions. Specifically, the importance of information in financial decisions may be reduced or eliminated by psychological aspects of the individual, such as a state of overconfidence that is individual or shared with a group, or by the individual's limited ability to process complex and abundant information. This paper aims to complement this emerging body of literature by studying how individuals perceive and process information when making financial decisions. We review these contributions and suggest a number of broad guidelines that can provide a framework for future discussion of this topic within financial decision theory.     

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND THE QUANTITY AND DISTRIBUTION OF EDUCATION: A SURVEY

Abstract The focus of this survey is to discuss different attempts at incorporating the distributional dimension of human capital into the theoretical and empirical growth framework. We present a series of models which deviate from the direct link between the aggregate or average level of human capital and economic growth in that they introduce the distribution of education as a new element in explaining the relationship under investigation. After surveying the theoretical literature, we present recent empirical work on the relation between economic performance and the average level, as well as the distribution of education, respectively.     

EDUCATION AND MODERNITY

Modernity is the combination of capitalism and democracy. Its economic core is based on property rights, which mobilise the organisation of resources. It also requires mass education to select intellectual talent for a complex division of labour. Western education paradoxically lacks developed property rights and a class of owners who seek profits through the satisfaction of consumer (educational) demand. Most of the intellectual ills in our society reflect this absence of modernity in our educational arrangements.