Subjective and objective evaluations of teacher effectiveness: Evidence from New York City

A substantial literature documents large variation in teacher effectiveness at raising student achievement, providing motivation to identify highly effective and ineffective teachers early in their careers. Using data from New York City public schools, we estimate whether subjective evaluations of teacher effectiveness have predictive power for the achievement gains made by teachers' future students. We find that these subjective evaluations have substantial power, comparable with and complementary to objective measures of teacher effectiveness taken from a teacher's first year in the classroom.     

The impact of the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI) on university and professional school admissions and the implications for the California Economy

Using data from the University of California and results from previously published research on the returns to higher education, this article presents a preliminary evaluation of the impact of ending affirmative action in admissions at a large, publicly funded university. At the undergraduate level, eliminating race as a factor in the admissions process will redistribute African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans away from the most competitive campuses (UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-San Diego) towards the less competitive campuses in the California State University system. This redistribution will lower the returns to schooling for those affected groups and could have a negative impact on the educational environment for all students. Affirmative action will, in the short run, reduce the number of African American, Mexican American, and Native American students admitted and, in the long run, will have an adverse effect on the delivery of legal and health care services to those racial and ethnic groups.     

Political versus economic institutions in the growth process

After a decade of research on the relationship between institutions and growth, there is no consensus about the exact way in which these two variables interact. In this paper we re-examine the role that institutions play in the growth process using data for developed and developing economies over the period 1975–2005. Our results indicate that the data is best described by an econometric model with two growth regimes. Political institutions are the key determinant of which regime an economy belongs to, while economic institutions have a direct impact on growth rates within each regime. These findings support the hypothesis that political institutions are one of the deep causes of growth, setting the stage in which economic institutions and standard covariates operate.     

Should I say it in English? Exploring language effects on print advertising among Latin American bilinguals

ABSTRACT

Despite the extensive research conducted on language standardization in advertising across several countries, little attention has been given to the use of English versus Spanish and code-switching when advertising to Latin American bilingual consumers. We propose that stereotypes about English speakers and code-switching have potential to help determine which language is most effective in print advertising. The results of experiments conducted in Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico show that the effects of language-related stereotypes on the persuasiveness of English ads vary across different countries. In the case of Chile, English may be persuasively superior, depending on the favourableness of the stereotype of individuals that code-switch. Differently, print ads in English are functionally equivalent, in terms of ad attitudes, to Spanish and code-switching ads in Mexico, and superior in Ecuador, regardless of the favourability of the language-related stereotypes. Suggestions for advertising practice and future research are offered.