Does Raising the Principal's Wage Improve the School's Outcomes? Quasi‐experimental Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment in Israel

This paper reports estimates of the causal effects of a 50 percent increase in the salary of headmasters of high schools in Israel. The results suggest that the program led to significant improvements in twelfth‐grade students' academic achievements. However, the effect was relatively modest, comprising increases of about 5–10 percent in the school mean matriculation rate, average score and number of subjects and credit units taken in matriculation programs. Based on these results and the lack of evidence regarding the effect of increasing teachers' salary, it seems that priority should be given to paying higher wages to school principals.     

Alleviating Transitory Food Crises in Sub-Saharan Africa: International Altruism and Trade

The donor community has responded to unexpected or transitorydrops in domestic food production in many countries in Sub-SaharanAfrica. An empirical framework estimates and analyzes the correlationbetween this food aid and domestic production. Both emergencyfood aid and commercial imports are used to offset the effectsof negative output shocks in Sub-Saharan African countries—themajor recipients of global emergency food aid. On average everyone-ton drop in cereal production is offset by the deliveryof 0.8 tons of cereal and dairy products from abroad (over fouryears). Most food aid arrives within a year of a shock, andcorrelation of shocks over time along with the differences betweencrop years and calendar years may explain the link between aidand production. The economic and political considerations alsodetermine the global response to the emergency food needs ofcountries in Africa. The international response is not contingenton the form of government or the level of political and humanrights violations. Poorer countries and those with well-establishednon-emergency food aid programs receive larger amounts of emergencyaid when needed.     

HOUSEHOLD RESPONSES TO PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICES: COST AND QUALITY TRADEOFFS

The effectiveness of government investments in health care dependson the public's response to price and quality as well as onwhether these expenditures actually improve health outcomes.Consumers, even those in low-income households, are willingto pay fees for better health care if the fees translate intoimproved access and reliability. But when prices rise withouta concomitant improvement in services, malnutrition and childmortality rates increase. The availability of basic health carehas a relatively greater impact on households with low incomesor low education, or both, than does the provision of more specializedservices. This article describes the types of services for whichhouseholds indicate they are willing to pay increased fees.It also indicates the potential gains from improving these services,as well as the consequences of moving faster on cost recoverythan on providing improved or better-targeted services.      

Implementing the Project-Based Learning Approach in an Academic Engineering Course

This paper presents perceptions and attitudes of freshmen students that have participated in an introductory Project-Based Learning (PBL) course in engineering. The course, `A creative introduction to mechanical engineering', was developed and is taught in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion. In this course, teams of students carry out mini-projects that require the design and construction of devices that perform pre-defined tasks. The qualitative paradigm was found to be suitable for studying the process undergone by the students, mainly because the study focused on the human aspect — the students' emotions, thoughts, behavior, and difficulties. Data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with the students, the teacher, and the teaching-assistant, by observations in the classroom, and by analyzing students' reports. The paper presents the students' perceptions of: the aim of the course; the instructor's role in a PBL environment; characteristics of PBL course; advantages of the PBL from the students' point of view; PBL as a learning environment for future engineers, and implications of learning in teams. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.