UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS AND LONG-TERM CHILD OUTCOMES: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

What are the long-term effects of universal preschool programs on child outcomes? We review 26 studies using natural experiments to estimate the effects of universal preschool programs for children aged 0–6 years on child outcomes measured from third grade to adulthood. Studies comparing universal preschool with a mix of parental, family, and private modes of care show mixed effects on test scores and on measures related to health, well-being, and behavior. All estimates for outcomes related to adequate primary and secondary school progression, years of schooling, highest degree completed, employment, and earnings indicate beneficial average effects of universal preschool programs. Three of the included studies calculate benefits-to-costs ratios and find ratios clearly above one. Universal preschool tends to be more beneficial for children with low socioeconomic status and there are not consistently different effects for boys or girls. Only three studies compare two alternative types of universal preschool programs in terms of long-term outcomes.     

Private School Usage in Australia 1975–2010: Evidence from the Household Expenditure Surveys

The use of private schools in Australia has increased greatly since the 1970s. This article shows that most of the growth has been concentrated in attendance at low-fee schools, while the growth in using high-fee schools has been modest. Furthermore, the increase has occurred for households at all income levels, for both single-parent and two-parent households, for households of all sizes, and irrespective of whether the household reference person is born in Australia or elsewhere. However, increasing income and changes in household composition can account only for a small part of the trend.     

Exploring customer online reviews for new product development: The case of identifying reinforcers in the cosmetic industry

This study analyzes online customer reviews in order to investigate customers' preferences regarding cosmetic products. Based on the marketing firm theory, this research explores the possibility of enhancing the bilateral contingent relationships between the customer and the marketing firm within the cosmetics domain. Hence, this study applies market-search concepts by extracting customer reviews and employing text analytics to identify reinforcers and factors in cosmetic products, which customers are expecting, and their sentiments towards them. Our results suggest that some reinforcers are shared among all customers, but some vary among the different customer segments based on their age and skin tone.     

Optimal portfolio allocation under the probabilistic VaR constraint and incentives for financial innovation

We characterize the investor’s optimal portfolio allocation subject to a budget constraint and a probabilistic VaR constraint in complete markets environments with a finite number of states. The set of feasible portfolios might no longer be connected or convex, while the number of local optima increases exponentially with the number of states, implying computational complexity. The optimal constrained portfolio allocation may therefore not be monotonic in the state–price density. We propose a type of financial innovation, which splits states of nature, that is shown to weakly enhance welfare, restore monotonicity of the optimal portfolio allocation in the state-price density, and reduce computational complexity. We are grateful to Ken Kavajecz and seminar participants at Harvard Business School, London School of Economics, Maastrict University, ZEI Bonn, and Danske Bank Symposium on Asset allocation and Value-at-Risk: Where Theory Meets Practice for comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also benefitted from the suggestions of two anonymous referees. Our papers can be downloaded from www.RiskResearch.org.     

Demographic determinants of incident experience and risk perception: do high-risk groups accurately perceive themselves as high-risk?

This paper analyzes demographic determinants of incident experience and risk perception, as well as the relationship between the two, for eight different risk domains. Analyses were conducted by merging the results of a Swedish population-based survey, which includes approximately 15,000 individuals, with demographic and socio-economic register data. Being male was associated with higher incident experience yet a lower risk perception for nearly all risk domains. Lower socioeconomic status was associated with higher incident experience for falls, and being a victim of violence but lower incident experience for road traffic accidents. Lower socioeconomic status was also associated with higher risk perception for falls. On aggregate, ranking the different domains, respondents’ risk perception was in almost perfect correspondence to the ranking of actual incident experience, with the exception that the risk of being a victim of violence is ranked higher than indicated by actual incident experience. On a demographic group level, men and highly educated respondents perceive their risks to be lower than what is expected considering their actual incident experience.     

The Long‐Run History of Income Inequality in Denmark

We use historical publications and micro data from tax returns to construct internationally comparable estimates of the development in income inequality in Denmark over the last 140 years. The study shows that income inequality and top income shares have declined during several distinct phases in between periods of stability. Furthermore, the quality of the Danish data allows us to analyse not only the development in top income shares but also broader inequality measures such as the Gini coefficient. These analyses show that top income shares are a good proxy for the underlying development in inequality.     

Epistemic habits: primary school teachers’ development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in a design-based research project

Generalist primary school teachers often have little or no training in school subjects such as science and technology. Not surprisingly, several studies show that they often experience difficulties when teaching these subjects, in fact some primary teachers even avoid teaching them. The over all aim of this study is to contribute to new theoretical and methodological tools for the study of how teachers develop knowledge for teaching, i.e. pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). And based on this, elaborate on implications for the professional development of primary school teachers. The teachers in the study participated in a design-based research project concerning technology education in Grade 1. We were especially interested in whether the teachers displayed any habits that contributed to the development of their personal PCK. We found three significant patterns in how the teachers, together with the researcher, developed knowledge of how to teach a specific topic in technology. We argue that these patterns tell us something about the teachers’ epistemic habits in relation to the teaching of technology. The existence of these habits could help to explain how teachers with little or no experience of teaching a subject can develop relevant PCK.     

No progressive taxation without discrimination? On the generality of the law in the classical liberal tradition

Any liberal theory that would take seriously the question of equality before the law is bound to engage with discrimination-related matters, and so long as one is a liberal one should oppose all discrimination coming from the state. This, however, may be a double-edged sword since many classical liberals have quite readily opposed progressive taxation by invoking its discriminatory nature. Some liberals will therefore conclude that one cannot establish different tax brackets, lest taxation be illiberal. This paper endeavours to refute this assumption. Progression may be compatible with the classical liberal concern for the rule of law, provided legislative discretion on tax-related matters is duly limited by the principle of generality, as well as by a certain standard of reasonable lawmaking. Through a careful distinction between four concepts of differential treatment, this paper demonstrates that progressive tax arrangements do not necessarily discriminate against the well-off, and that it can efficiently fulfill some legitimate classical liberals objectives.     

Adaptation and inertia in dynamic environments

Research summary : We address conflicting claims and mixed empirical findings about adaptation as a response to increased environmental dynamism. We disentangle distinct dimensions of environmental dynamism—the direction, magnitude, and frequency of change—and identify how selection shapes adaptive responses to these dimensions. Our results show how frequent directional changes undermine the value of exploration and decisively shift performance advantages to inert organizations that restrict exploration. In contrast, increased environmental variance rewards exploration. Our results also show that, in dynamic environments, the best‐performing organizations are generally more inert than less successful organizations. Managerial summary : Our research helps managers to understand under what business conditions investments into exploration and strategic flexibility are more likely to pay off. Dynamic business environments characterized by persistent trends and by large, infrequently occurring structural shocks reward strategic pursuit of temporary advantage. Thus, exploration and strategic flexibility are preferred strategies. In contrast, the challenge in frequently changing environments with fleeting opportunities is to identify and to focus on strategic actions whose payoffs on average are high, independent of environmental volatility. Low levels of exploration and long‐term strategic focus are preferred strategies in these circumstances. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.