Work and play take school time away? The impact of extracurricular and work time on educational time for live-at-home college students

We use data from the 2003–2014 American Time Use Survey to estimate the effects of time allocated to work and extracurriculars on time spent in educational activities (class and homework) for live-at-home college students, who make up a large share of the college population. Our instrumental variables strategy indicates that students are more likely to substitute time away from homework than from class, and that the effects are generally stronger for work than for extracurriculars. These findings, which remain even after correcting for selection on unobservables through non-parametric matching methods, show that work leads to decreases in the amount of time spent in class by 47 min and on homework by 56 min, whereas extracurriculars lead to a loss of 22 min of homework time. Thus, while after-school activities (extracurriculars and work) may be beneficial with respect to human capital development, they may also have a counteracting, unintended effect due to students’ substitution away from educational pursuits.     

ARE IMPACTS OF EARLY INTERVENTIONS IN THE SCANDINAVIAN WELFARE STATE CONSISTENT WITH A HECKMAN CURVE? A META‐ANALYSIS

“Early intervention” has been a mantra in recent debates about human capital investment. Strong theoretical models motivate this focus by predicting that investment in children is most cost‐effective when they are young. The “Heckman curve” summarizes this idea visually (Heckman, 2006). However, hardly any reviews scrutinize this hypothesis empirically in modern welfare states such as those in Scandinavia that already invest heavily during early childhood. Any such review is ideally based on interventions conducted as randomized controlled trials (RCTs), set in the same welfare state, and comparable across ages through cost‐standardized effects. This meta‐analysis assembles cost‐standardized effect estimates from 10 RCTs, including a total of 18 intervention arms and 30,578 participants (aged 1.5–24 years), conducted by the same research center in the Scandinavian welfare state of Denmark. These interventions show significant effects relative to their costs, despite the large baseline investment level. Interventions targeted at younger children tend to produce larger effects, consistent with the Heckman curve. However, variation in the effect size within age groups is as large as it is across age groups. This indicates that both the quality and timing of investments matter and that “early interventions” are not necessarily superior to later interventions.     

How Do Longer Parental Leaves Affect Women’s Workplace Tasks? Evidence from Germany

This study examines how the radical extension of the period of parental leave, from eighteen to thirty-six months, that occurred in Germany in 1992 affected the nature of tasks women performed in their workplaces. The results of the analysis – which used a difference-in-differences method – suggests that this reform had a significant impact on the type of tasks carried out at work by women in the former West Germany. The study finds that after the reform was introduced, the women affected by it performed roles involving significantly less creative and more codifiable tasks than they had done previously. This analysis adds a new dimension to the discussion of the impact of maternity leave legislation on labor market outcomes.     

Exports and governance: Is the Middle East and North Africa region different?

This paper aims to analyse whether better governance rewards economic performance and facilitates the integration of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region into the world economy. In comparison with other regions in the world economy, MENA countries suffer from important institutional deficiencies, which generate insecurity and difficult international transactions. Despite this fact, the relationship between trade and institutional quality in MENA countries remains unexplored. A gravity model of trade augmented with governance indicators is estimated for the exports of 19 MENA countries, their 189 trading partners and for all exporters in the period from 1996 to 2013. The main results indicate that improvements in five of the six governance indicators increase exports from MENA countries, whereas better governance in destination countries does not affect MENA exports. Instead, each of the six governance indicators used has a positive effect on bilateral trade for the entire sample of exporters (189). Moreover, the effect of country‐pair similarity in governance indicators suggests that a similar level of regulatory quality and rule of law in exporting and importing countries increases exports from MENA countries. Similarities in voice and accountability also foster exports for the average exporter, but not for MENA exporters.     

The dynamics of switching between governmental and independent venture capitalists: theory and evidence

Small Business Economics - In this paper, we study the switching dynamics between independent VCs (IVCs) and governmental VCs (GVCs) by means of a theoretical model and an empirical analysis. By...     

The social construction of “shared growth”: Zambia Sugar and the uneven terrain of social benefit

Recent years have witnessed a growing trend in agricultural investment and large‐scale farmland acquisition in the Global South and a rapid expansion of scholarship and public debate over the nature, consequences, and desirability of these trends. The polarization of this debate into “win/lose” narratives raises the question of whether, and under what conditions, the logic of capital accumulation driving farmland acquisition and investment can engender broad‐based social benefits akin to “shared growth.” This paper sheds light on this question through a detailed look at the recent expansion of Zambia Sugar's Nakambala Estate in Mazabuka, Zambia. We explore outcomes linked to two of the most prominent pathways through which social benefits are said to accrue: smallholder incorporation and employment. Findings demonstrate the unevenness of outcomes linked to both pathways, with the concrete benefits both claimed and observed through some measures quickly eroding under the weight of alternative performance metrics. The unevenness produced by the intensification of capitalist relations is manifested not just between those differentially positioned with respect to the incoming investment (“outgrower,” “employee,” and “land loser”) but within each of those conditions. This ambiguity opens spaces for competing representations of the promises and pitfalls of these processes, while highlighting the shaky ground on which shared growth and inclusive business agendas stand.     

Leadership,governance, and perceptions of trust in the higher education industry

This article presents a trust‐centered, integrated model for achieving educational excellence in the higher education industry with focus on governing boards and strategies for academic quality and financial performance. The discussion includes leadership themes and strategies on development of teacher‐leaders, creating a culture of shared leadership and effective governance for performance outcomes, robust evaluations of student‐learning assessments for continuous improvement, and strategic leadership in the implementation of high‐quality programs. Perceptions of trust form the foundation of the integrated model with influences of personality, culture, motivation, values, reliability, competence, and intuition. Trust among board trustees is essential for creating collaborative environments for innovative change and educational performance excellence. Collaborative environments promote a sense of shared leadership and governance to encourage innovation and performance excellence at all levels within the educational institution.     

Induced Institutional Innovation and Transaction Costs: The Case of the Australian National Native Title Tribunal

The theory of induced innovation says that technological innovations which economize on relatively scarce inputs will be invented and adopted. Hayami and Ruttan have hypothesized that this model also holds for institutional innovations. Coase and Williamson suggest that economic organization, such as vertical integration, is the result of transaction cost minimization. Coase discusses the transaction costs of negotiation versus other alternatives for solving externality problems. This paper brings these previously unconnected threads of the literature together and incorporates transaction costs in an induced institutional innovation model.

This conceptual model is brought to bear on the issue of institutional innovations over time in relation to the National Native Title Tribunal. In addition to the reductions in transaction costs from a negotiated settlement rather than litigation, there are other advantages of negotiation. These may include improved “quality” of settlements, improved relations between the negotiating parties, and more timely resolution.     

Assessing the effect of educational programs on public schools’ performance

This paper provides evidence on the effectiveness in the implementation of an educational program which offered public schools in Catalonia (Spain) the opportunity to improve the quality of educational provision. We employ a difference-in-differences approach on rich balanced panel data of public schools. The results confirm that the program did effectively improve students’ achievement and reduce absenteeism, albeit not for all modules and school types or across all years. Our results highlight that it is important to condition the delivery of resources upon specific academic goals depending on the characteristics of the treated population. Additionally, program results suggest the need to enhance educational program design in order to get better evaluation feedback.

Abbreviations: DoE: Department of Education; EU: European Union; PMQCE: Projecte per a la Millora de la Qualitat dels Centres Educatius; DiD: Differences-in-Differences; SFDC: Schools Facing Disadvantaged Conditions; OECD: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development; REA: Regional Educational Authority     

Filtering and email pricing as solutions to spam

We analyze the success of filtering as a solution to the spam problem when used alone or concurrently with sender pricing, receiver pricing, or both. We find that filtering alone may exacerbate the spam problem in terms of both the total number of spam message sent and the expected number of spam messages received, because it may cause the spammer to send multiple variants of his message to each customer in an attempt to evade the filter. Sender and receiver prices work as expected. The effectiveness of each instrument improves as the levels of other instruments are increased.