A Survey of Economic Understanding in U.S. High Schools

The recent widespread adoption of online competitions in economic education provides a unique opportunity to make frequent assessments of economic literacy in U.S. classrooms. In this survey, student responses to test items from the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL) are used to create economic concept and content area achievement benchmarks. These benchmarks provide an interim renorming of the TEL and allow the authors to gauge the status of economic understanding among high school students. The data also allow the authors to compare learning outcomes between regular and advanced economics classes. Finally, the authors find that students in advanced economics classes significantly outperform students in regular classes.     

Financial Services and the Trust Deficit: Why the Industry Should Make Better Governance a Top Priority

The U.S. economy, while recovering, is still feeling lingering effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the recession that followed. Although government has acted to prevent a future recurrence, much needs to be done—particularly in corporate governance of financial firms. Currently, there is a pervasive lack of trust in the financial industry, which will be difficult to undo. Nonetheless, finance is so important that it is critical that trust be restored. This is particularly true in an era in which planning for retirement is inadequate, and financial literacy is increasingly important. This implies a critical role for a financial services industry whose guidance can be trusted. This trust must be built through appropriate corporate governance on the part of all stakeholders, and specific recommendations are advanced for bringing this about.     

Increasing public involvement to reduce depreciative behavior in recreation settings

Abstract

Managers of public recreation areas are concerned about the increase in vandalism, littering, and user disregard for regulations and the rights of others. Several strategies are available to reduce or control depreciative behavior, but little empirical evidence exists as to what approaches are really successful, where, when, and under what conditions. This report evaluated a program to increase the involvement of campers in the management of depreciative behavior. Results suggested that users who witness littering can be encouraged to help either by reporting infractions to authorities, dealing directly with the litterer, or picking up the litter. Overall, an appeal made to help resulted in a 22 percent increase in one or more types of involvement compared to control conditions.     

MULTI‐ASSET STOCHASTIC LOCAL VARIANCE CONTRACTS

Variance swaps now trade actively over‐the‐counter (OTC) on both stocks and stock indices. Also trading OTC are variations on variance swaps which localize the payoff in time, in the underlying asset price, or both. Given that the price of the underlying asset evolves continuously over time, it is well known that there exists a semirobust hedge for these localized variance contracts. Remarkably, the hedge succeeds even though the stochastic process describing the instantaneous variance is never specified. In this paper, we present a generalization of these results to the case of two or more underlying assets.     

The Measurement of Average Farm Size

Comparisons are regularly drawn between the average sizes of farms in particular countries or regions and in different farm-type categories. Indeed average farm size is often considered to explain (or create expectations of) changes or differences in technical or economic efficiency through time or between countries. There are, however, a number of issues involved in specifying what is meant by a farm and in choosing a suitable measure of farm size. These are examined prior to a discussion of various measures of average size, one of which (the mid-aggregate point) is described in some detail. The measures are illustrated with reference to agricultural holdings in England and in the Member States of the European Union.     

Quantile regression methods for recursive structural equation models

Two classes of quantile regression estimation methods for the recursive structural equation models of Chesher [2003. Identification in nonseparable models. Econometrica 71, 1405–1441.] are investigated. A class of weighted average derivative estimators based directly on the identification strategy of Chesher is contrasted with a new control variate estimation method. The latter imposes stronger restrictions achieving an asymptotic efficiency bound with respect to the former class. An application of the methods to the study of the effect of class size on the performance of Dutch primary school students shows that (i) reductions in class size are beneficial for good students in language and for weaker students in mathematics, (ii) larger classes appear beneficial for weaker language students, and (iii) the impact of class size on both mean and median performance is negligible.