Tesi sul tema "Education Economic aspects"

Leading theme in this master’s thesis is adaptation and preparation to ever changing requirements of skills and knowledge in the working life. These changes of requirements in the working life are implied by the changes in the occupational structure in Finland that is presented in the thesis. The data used in thesis to show the changes in the occupational structure in Finland Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data, FLEED, which is gathered by Statistics Finland and it shows changes in occupational structure of Finland between years 1995 and 2007. Education is considered in this thesis so that its object is to prepare children and future generations for working life with suitable skills and knowledge. The variety of other, equally important, objects that education has and possibly contradictions as well as problems that might arise in the course of achieving all the objects is beyond of this study. Changing occupational structure arises a question that how education prepares itself to the unknown changes? To answer the question asked, I will introduce Economics of education and Educational planning and how these two relate to each other, especially how economics of education has affected education and educational planning. Therefore I will first take historical review of the economics of education and introduce two main theories; human capital theory and screening theory. The main difference of these two will be explained and also what kind of difference it would make to education if either one could be proved right. It would also have an effect on how education should be arranged in the society. Educational planning has had, in its course, different approaches to analyze and predict future. I will review those approaches; also these approaches have been influenced by economics of education. In the last part of the thesis I bring up studies in Finland has tried to prepare and project changing work life. Also I discuss about can education bring something new to economics of education
Tämän Pro gradu-tutkielman johtava teema on mukautuminen ja valmistautuminen muuttuviin vaatimuksiin tiedoista ja taidoista työelämässä. Ammattirakenteen muutos Suomessa viittaa siihen että vaatimukset erilaisille tiedoille ja taidoille työelämässä on tapahtumassa. Aineisto ammattirakenteen muutoksesta on Tilastokeskuksen yhdistetty työntekijä-työnantaja-aineisto (Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data FLEED). Ammattirakenteen muutos ajoittuu vuosien 1995 ja 2007 välille. Koulutus mielletään tässä Pro gradu-tutkielmassa sellaiseksi toiminnaksi jonka tavoite on valmistaa lapsia sekä tulevia sukupolvia työelämään oikeanlaisilla taidoilla ja tiedoilla. Yhtälailla tärkeät muut tavoitteet, mitä koulutukselle ja kasvatukselle on annettu, sekä mahdollisesti syntyviä ristiriitoja tavoitteita saavuttamisessa ovat tämän tutkielman ulkopuolella. Muutokset ammattirakenteessa luo kysymyksen, että miten koulutus on valmistautunut tällaisiin tuntemattomiin muutoksiin? Vastatakseni kysymykseen esittelen koulutusekonomian ja koulutussuunnittelun, sekä erityisesti miten koulutusekonomia on vaikuttanut koulutussuunnitteluun. Aluksi käyn läpi koulutusekonomian ja esittelen sen kaksi pääteoriaa: inhimillisen pääoman teorian ja siiviläteorian. Selitän millä tavoin nämä teoriat eroavat toisistaan ja mikäli jompikumpi voidaan todistaa oikeaksi millainen vaikutus sillä olisi koulutukseen. Koulutussuunnittelussa on käytetty monenlaisia analysointivälineitä tulevaisuuden ennakoimiseksi. Esittelen nämä eri tavat ja työkalut, sekä miten koulutussuunnittelu on historiansa aikana muuttunut ja miten taloudellinen ajattelu on muuttanut koulutussuunnittelua. Viimeisessä osassa tuon esille tutkimuksia siitä miten Suomessa pyritään ennakoimaan ja valmistautumaan muutoksiin työelämässä. Käyn myös keskustelua siitä voiko kasvatustiede tuoda jotain uutta koulutusekonomiaan

This thesis examines three different aspects of education policy to ascertain their effects on individual outcomes, both in the classroom and in the labour market. The goal is to provide new empirical evidence using robust identification strategies that can inform better policy. The first chapter looks at the role of pre-primary education in Germany using the German Socio-Economic Panel data set (GSOEP) to determine if attending an early education programme for longer increases the probability of attending a higher-level secondary school at age fourteen. I employ family fixed effects estimation and quasi-experimental analysis to control for selection. The results of the family fixed effects estimation show a small and negative impact of attending early education for more years. In the quasi-experimental analysis, based upon a federal law change in 1996, I find no impact of more years of early education on later schooling outcomes. In the second chapter of this thesis, I again use the GSOEP to examine the recent German reform to extend the length of the primary school day. I exploit the quasi-experimental roll-out of reform to assign treatment to women and look at whether increasing school hours increases the likelihood that mothers enter into employment or extend their hours if already working. I find that the policy has an effect at the extensive margin, drawing more women into the labour market, but that there is no significant impact of the policy at the intensive margin. In the final chapter I turn my attention to how peers' non-cognitive traits impact an individual's learning outcomes. Using an educational panel from Flanders, Belgium, I use the linear-in- means model of peer effects as well as several non-linear models to see how peers' personalities in a classroom affect Dutch and math scores. The results show that having more conscientious peers on average positively impacts Dutch and math scores, but that a greater dispersion of conscientiousness hurts Dutch outcomes. I also find that having more extroverted peers on average hurts math performance.

This PhD thesis takes a ’micro’ perspective on the production of higher education and research. More precisely, I use tools of industrial organization to study two individual institutions involved in their production process. The second chapter studies universities, the main producers of higher education and research, and the third and fourth chapters analyze scientific journals, which are central in the production and the dissemination of science. Besides being crucial nodes in the production and transmission of

knowledge, these institutions, interestingly, share other common characteristics: they both emerged before the Industrial Revolution, their importance increased over the centuries and they seem unavoidable today, and many actors are private not-for-profit.
Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The over-arching concern of the three parts of the dissertation is how economics can and should influence education policymaking, the emphasis on the economics side being models of country development and the contribution made by human capital. Part I begins with a review of economic growth theory. How educational performance and country development have been measured is then discussed, with considerable attention going towards conceptual and measurement complexities associated with the latter. An approach is presented for expanding the number of countries whose educational quality can be compared, by expanding the number of linkable testing programmes. This approach, which above all allows for the inclusion of more African and Latin American countries, is one of the key contributions made by the dissertation to the existing body of knowledge. Three existing empirical growth models are examined, including work by Hanushek and Woessman on the relationship between educational quality and income. Part I ends with a discussion on how the economics literature can best be packaged to influence education policymaking. A ‘growth simulator’ tool in Excel for informing the policy discourse is presented. The production of this tool includes establishing empirically a feasible improvement trajectory for educational quality that policymakers can use and some analysis of how linguistic fractionalisation in a country evolves over time. This tool can be considered a further key output of the dissertation. A basic model for relating educational quality, via income growth, to teacher pay, is presented. Part II offers an analysis of UNESCO country-level data on enrolment and spending going back to 1970, with a view to establishing historical patterns that can inform education planners, particularly those in developing countries, on how budgets and enrolment expansion should be distributed across the levels of the education system. The analysis presented in Part II represents a novel way of using existing countrylevel data and can be seen as an important step towards filling a gap experienced by education policymakers, namely the paucity of empirical evidence that can guide decisions around the prioritisation of education levels. Part II moreover arrives at a few empirical findings, including the finding that enrolment and spending patterns have been systematically different in countries with faster economic growth and the finding that historical per student spending at the secondary level appears to play a larger role in development than was previously thought. Part III contrasts the available economic advice for education policymakers with what policymakers actually appear to believe in. The focus falls, in particular, on four developing countries: South Africa, Brazil, Chile and China. A few areas where economists could explore the data to a greater degree or communicate available findings differently, in the interests of better education policies, are identified. Part III partly serves as a demonstration of how comparisons between education systems can be better oriented towards providing advice to education policymakers on questions relating to efficiency and equity.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die oorkoepelende fokus van die drie gedeeltes van die verhandeling is hoe die studie van ekonomie beleid in die onderwyssektor kan en moet beïnvloed. Veral belangrik is modelle van die ekonomiese groei van lande en die rol van menslike kapitaal in hierdie modelle. Die eerste gedeelte van die verhandeling bied oorsig van die teorie rakende ekonomiese groei. Hoe onderwysprestasie en nasionale ontwikkeling gemeet word, word dan bespreek, met sterk fokus op die konseptuele en tegniese kompleksiteit van laasgenoemde. Metode word aangebied waardeur meer lande se onderwysgehalte vergelyk kan word, deur middel van die koppeling van data van groter aantal toetsprogramme. Hierdie metode, wat veral die insluiting van meer lande uit Afrika en Latyn-Amerika toelaat, is een van die kernbydraes van die verhandeling tot die bestaande korpus van kennis. Drie bestaande empiriese modelle van ekonomiese groei word geanaliseer, insluitende die werk van Hanushek en Woessman oor die verhouding tussen onderwysgehalte en inkomste. Die eerste gedeelte sluit af met bespreking oor hoe die ekonomiese literatuur optimaal aangebied kan word om beleidmaking in die onderwys te beïnvloed. Groei-simulasie hulpmiddel in Excel wat die beleidsdiskoers kan vergemaklik word aangebied en verduidelik. Die ontwikkeling van hierdie gereedskap maak dit moontlik om op empiriese basis moontlike trajek vir die verbetering van onderwysgehalte te bepaal, wat vir beleidsmakers nuttig kan wees, sowel as ontleding van hoe linguïstiese verbrokkeling in land histories kan ontwikkel. Hierdie gereedskap kan as verdere sleutelproduk van die verhandeling beskou work. Basiese model van hoe onderwysgehalte en die inkomste van onderwysers deur middel van ekonomiese groei gekoppel is, word ook aangebied. Die tweede gedeelte van die verhandeling bied ontleding van UNESCO se nasionale statistieke van lande oor skoolinskrywings en onderwysuitgawes vanaf 1970, met die oog op die identifikasie van belangrike historiese tendense vir onderwysbeplanners, veral in ontwikkelende lande. Die fokus hier is veral op hoe begrotings en inskrywings ideaal oor die verskillende vlakke van die onderwysstelsel versprei behoort te wees. Die ontleding in die tweede gedeelte verteenwoordig innoverende manier om die bestaande nasionale statistieke te gebruik en kan beskou word as belangrike stap om gaping te vul wat deur beleidsmakers in die onderwys ondervind word, naamlik die gebrek aan empiriese gegewens vir besluite oor prioritisering tussen onderwysvlakke. Die tweede gedeelte bied ook verskeie empiriese bevindinge, soos dat die tendense rakende inskrywings en besteding per student sistematies tussen lande met vinniger ekonomiese groei en ander lande verskil, asook dat historiese besteding per student op die sekondêre vlak blykbaar groter invloed op ontwikkeling het as wat vroeër gedink is. Die derde gedeelte van die verhandeling vergelyk die advies wat die ekonomiese literatuur aan beleidmakers in die onderwys bied met wat beleidmakers self blykbaar glo. Die fokus val op veral vier ontwikkelende lande: Suid-Afrika, Brasilië, Chili en China. Gebiede word bespreek waar ekonome in die belang van beter onderwysbeleid tot groter mate data kan analiseer of bevindings op beter maniere kan kommunikeer. Die derde gedeelte kan beskou word as demonstrasie van hoe vergelykings tussen verskeie onderwysstelsels beter georiënteer kan word om vir die beleidmaker in die onderwys advies te verskaf rakende kwessies van doeltreffendheid en gelykheid.

This DPhil thesis consists of three related but independent chapters discussing the question of admission and access to higher education. Chapter 1 explores the extent to which the underrepresentation of students from certain population groups at highly selective universities, can be explained by poor information and high non-monetary application costs, and how the universities' admission policies may affect outcomes. This chapter takes a positive approach and proposes a theoretical model to explore the implications of implementing alternative admission policies. Motivated by the results that arise from this exploration, Chapter 2 proceeds with a normative approach, proposing a general framework to study the optimal selection policy from a pool of applicants, taking into account that the pool of applicants is endogenous. This, it is argued, allows a characterisation of the optimal form of discrimination in university admissions. Chapter 3 studies the relationship between tuition fees and academic selectivity, by developing a different, although somewhat related model of monopolistic competition, where universities compete for students by simultaneously selecting prices and admission standards.

Defence date: 24 February 2022
Examining Board : Prof. Michèle Belot (Cornell University); Prof. Andrea Ichino (EUI); Prof. Almudena Sevilla (UCL); Prof. Arnaud Chevalier (Royal Holloway University of London)
This thesis is composed of three independent essays in applied microeconomics. The first contributes to the field of gender and family economics and analyzes the effect of the gender of the second-born sibling on first-born individuals’ attitudes. The second chapter speaks to the health economics literature, evaluating the unitended consequences of a liberalization of the morning after pill. The topic of the final chapter lies within the economics of education, proposing a way to differentiate between degrees depending on the type of higher education institution. Even though the three chapters seem separate, all of them share my interest in gender and education economics, as well as causal estimation. In Chapter 1, joint with Martin Habets, we analyze the causal effect of sibling gender on attitudes and preferences. Comparing first-born women with a next-born sister to first-born women with a next-born brother allows us to estimate the causal effect of sibling gender. In particular, we find that a next-born sister leads first-born women to have less stereotypically female preferences in education. We also explore how the gender of the next-born sibling influences parental involvement. Our findings indicate that parents are more involved in the education of their first-born daughter if their next-born sibling is also a girl. These results shed light on how sibling gender influences preferences and attitudes, specifically those for education choices that are gender role conforming. To further explore the role of sibling gender in shaping attitudes, we have designed an online survey – currently in progress – to measure gender roles more precisely. In Capter 2, I analyze the causal effects of liberalizing access to emergency hormonal contraception (EHC), also known as the morning after pill, on young adults’ reproductive behavior in England. The liberalization, which changed the prescription status from “on doctor’s prescription only” to “available without prescription in pharmacies", created easier and more timely access to EHC for all women aged 16 years or older. In a theoretical model of individual behavior I find that EHC, which can be seen as i insurance against pregnancies, acts both as a substitute for regular contraception, as well as a substitute for abortions. This creates the need for analyzing the issue empirically since overall effects on outcomes such as births and abortions are unclear. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that easier access to EHC increases births only among 20-24 year olds. I find no effects on abortions or sexually transmitted infections. Chapter 3, attempts to differentiate the degree attainment in the UK by type of higher education institutions. Historically higher education in the UK has been shaped by a dual system: elite universities on the one hand and polytechnics and other higher education institutions on the other. Despite the formal equivalence of both degrees, the two institution types faced different financing, target populations, admission procedures and subjects taught. Nevertheless, in survey data they are often indistinguishable. We overcome this problem using a multiple imputation technique in the UKHLS and BHPS data sets. We examine the validity of inference based on imputed values using Monte Carlo simulations. We also verify that the imputed values are consistent with university graduation rates computed using the universe of undergraduate students in the UK.
-- 1 Why Sisters are Better than Brothers - The Effect of Sibling Gender on Attitudes -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Literature -- 1.2.1 Review of the mechanisms behind sibling gender effects -- 1.3 Identification and Estimation Strategy -- 1.4 Data and Sampl -- 1.4.1 Next Steps Data -- 1.4.2 British Cohort Study -- 1.5 Results -- 1.5.1 Results from the Next Steps Data -- 1.5.2 Results British Cohort Study -- 1.6 Survey -- 1.6.1 Survey Questions -- 1.6.2 Survey Regression Specification -- 1.6.3 Survey Index Construction and Technical Details -- 1.7 Conclusion and Outlook -- References -- Appendix 1.A Appendix -- 1.A.1 Summary Statistics -- 1.A.2 Balance Tests -- 1.A.3 Results Next Steps Data -- 1.A.4 Results British Cohort Study -- 2 Liberalizing the Morning After Pill - Effects on Young Women -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Literature Review -- 2.3 Emergency Hormonal Contraception -- 2.4 The Model -- 2.4.1 Solution of the Model -- 2.4.2 Comparative Statics: The Reform -- 2.5 Data -- 2.6 Empirical Strategy -- 2.7 First Stage -- 2.8 Estimation Results -- 2.8.1 Randomization Inference -- 2.9 Robustness Checks --2.9.1 Common Trends: Leads in Main Regression -- 2.9.2 Serial Correlation -- 2.10 Conclusion -- References -- 3 Multiple Imputation of University Degree Attainment -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Institutional background -- 3.3 Data -- 3.3.1 Degree attainment in the BHPS and the UKHLS -- 3.4 Multiple imputation -- 3.4.1 Missing data mechanism -- 3.4.2 Imputation model -- 3.4.3 Evaluation -- 3.5 Results and discussion -- 3.6 Conclusion -- References

Orientador: Orly Zucatto Mantovani de Assis
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação
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Resumo: O objetivo deste trabalho foi investigar o pensamento econômico de crianças brasileiras, entre 9 e 11 anos, antes e após o desenvolvimento de um Programa de Educação Econômica. A principal relevância dessa investigação foi introduzir o estudo da formação do pensamento econômico em crianças, no contexto da pesquisa educacional no Brasil, trabalhando o tema a partir de um modelo de desenvolvimento das idéias econômicas, vinculado à perspectiva cognitivista e com influência do ambiente social e educativo. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida em três etapas. A primeira consistiu na tradução, adaptação e preparação do instrumento de medida, Escala TAE-N, desenvolvida e validada no Chile e replicada através deste trabalho no Brasil, com uma amostra de 132 crianças, alunos e alunas da 3ª e 4ª séries do Ensino Fundamental, da rede particular de ensino da cidade de São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo. Ainda nesta fase, foi realizada, numa amostra de 30 crianças, uma entrevista clínica sobre o tema, com o propósito de caracterizar os sujeitos envolvidos. Os resultados desta primeira etapa mostraram, tendo como parâmetro os Níveis de Desenvolvimento do Pensamento Econômico proposto por Denegri, que as crianças apresentavam um pensamento econômico primitivo, orientado para uma compreensão específica dos fenômenos econômicos e com uma capacidade de estabelecer relações e explicar a realidade econômica a partir de suas vivências e das informações que recebem do meio familiar, escolar e da mídia. Na segunda etapa, foi desenvolvido com as turmas um Programa de Educação Econômica, intitulado ¿Educando para o Consumo Consciente¿, utilizando a metodologia de trabalho com projetos, numa perspectiva interdisciplinar e transversal. Na terceira e última etapa desta pesquisa, a Escala TAE-N foi novamente aplicada nos alunos. Verificou-se, nesta segunda aplicação, que todas as turmas apresentaram um aumento na média das pontuações, o que sinaliza um desenvolvimento na compreensão dos fenômenos econômicos. Os resultados indicaram, ainda, o crescimento igual nas diferentes idades e um melhor desempenho dos meninos em relação às meninas no espaço entre os tempos de aplicação da Escala. Em relação às turmas, todas apresentaram crescimento na segunda aplicação do TAE-N, embora em percentuais diferentes. As análises permitiram tanto uma compreensão mais específica de como as crianças brasileiras compreendem o mundo econômico, quanto uma visão mais abrangente da importância de se trabalhar esse tema no âmbito das escolas de Educação Básica
Abstract: The objective of this paper was to investigate the economic thought of Brazilian children, between nine and eleven years old, before and after the development of na Economic Education Program. Its mainly relevance was to introduce the economic thought formation study in children in the context of educational research in Brazil, working on the theme in a development model of economic ideas connected to the cognitivist perspective and with influence of the social and educative enviroments. This research was developed in three stages. The first consisted on the translation, adaptation and preparation of the measure tool, TAE-N scale, developed and checked in Chile and pealed through this research in Brazil, with a sample of 132 children, students of 3rd and 4th grades of the Elementary School, in a Private School in São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo. Still at this stage, a clinical interview in a sample of 30 children was made with the purpose of characterizing them. The results of this first stage showed, by the parameters of the Development Levels of the Economic Thought, prepositioned by Denegri, that the children have presented a primitive economic thought, directed to a specific comprehention of the economic phenomena and with the capacity of creating relations and explain the economic reality from their own daily experiences and from the information they received from their familiar, schoolar and media enviroments. The second stage was developed with the classes of an Economic Education Program entitled ¿Educando para o Consumo Consciente¿, using the methodology of projects work, in a transversal and interdisciplinar perspective. Finally, at the third and last stage of this research, the TAE-N scale has been applied again on the students. It was verified that al the classes presented an increase in their medium scores, what signalyzes a development in the economic phenomena comprehention. The results indicated an equal growth in the different ages analyzed and a better performance of the boys than the one of the girls, during the application of the Scale. In concern to the classes, all of them presented knowledge growth in the second application of TAE-N, although in different percentuals. The analysis enabled a more specific comprehention of how the Brazilian children understand the economic world as well as more open view on the importance of working on this theme in the Elementary School enviroment
Doutorado
Psicologia, Desenvolvimento Humano e Educação
Doutor em Educação

This dissertation disputes conventional interpretations of the comparative political economy literature on higher education. In particular, I challenge the common assumption that access to higher education is structured by income. Instead, based on insights from the relevant psychology, sociology and economics literature, I argue that a child's probability of entering higher education is predominantly a function of her abilities, and that her abilities are strongly related to her parents' level of education. I develop a theory of the distributive politics of higher education solidly grounded in this relationship. The result of this model is the counter intuitive hypothesis that the initial expansions of higher education benefit the children of more highly educated parents. Moreover, more highly educated families are the net beneficiaries of free higher education and generous subsidies. Extensive survey evidence from Britain, Australia, Canada and Sweden of higher education policy preferences confirms this picture of the politics of higher education as a zero-sum distributive game between highly and lesser educated families. In order to analyse the consequences of these preference patterns for higher education policy, I develop a theoretical and empirical measure of voting power for multi-party systems. Voting power measures how many votes a party stands to gain from converting and mobilising voters by distributing resources from one group to another. Using data from 15 EU countries, I show that parliaments and cabinets, on average, stand to win more votes from pleasing highly educated voters than from targeting less educated voters. Furthermore, the conversion imperative is much stronger than the mobilisation imperative. Statistical analyses show that variations in the voting power of highly educated individuals over the government help to explain variations in higher education policy across countries and within countries over time. All in all, the theoretical and empirical analyses presented in this dissertation represent a significant contribution towards understanding the specific distributive politics of higher education, and the political economy of redistribution more generally.

Defence date: 21 September 2021
Examining Board: Prof. Andrea Ichino, EUI, Supervisor, Prof. Giacomo Calzolari, EUI, Co-Supervisor, Prof. Stephen Machin, London School of Economics, Prof. Giulio Zanella, University of Bologna.
This thesis consists of four essays in applied microeconomics. Chapter 1 studies the effects of parental job loss on various outcomes of children and provides new evidence on the heterogeneity of these effects along the cognitive ability distribution of children. I find that higher intelligence score protects children from the negative effects, but only in the long run. In the shorter term, instead of protecting, high intelligence exacerbates the cost of parental unemployment in terms of educational outcomes. This forces high-intelligence children with unemployed parents to start their careers at lower-paying jobs. Nevertheless, they can prove themselves via work performance and switch to better-paying jobs. I also provide suggestive evidence that their lifetime earnings could be higher had they continued their education. Chapter 2, joint with Michele Boldrin and Aldo Rustichini, studies the relationship between fertility decisions and intelligence. We document that fertility may be negatively associated, at least in advanced societies, with higher intelligence. A possible explanation of the finding is provided in models describing the choice of individuals (in particular women) facing a trade-off between parenthood and career concerns. With positive complementarity between intelligence and effort in education and career advancement, higher intelligence individuals, particularly women, will sacrifice parenthood to education. Thus, current education and labor market policies may be imposing an uneven penalty on more talented women. We test and find support for the model in a large data set for the UK (Understanding Society), using several alternative measures of fertility. Our results provide a new interpretation of the well documented fact in demographic studies that education is negatively associated with fertility: it is not education as an outcome, but as an aspiration that reduces fertility. Chapter 3 investigates the joint effect of local economic conditions on educational decisions and subsequent labour market outcomes using the instrumental variable approach. I find that adverse economic conditions at age 14 reduce educational attainment, except for the children aiming at university degrees. Second, exposure to a higher unemployment rate at age 14 permanently reduces real hourly wages over the life cycle. The IV estimator suggests that a year of education lost due to initial economic conditions corresponds to about 8% lower wages at ages 26-30 and 6% lower wages at ages 41-45. Chapter 4, joint with Johanna Reuter, attempts to differentiate the degree attainment in the UK by type of higher education institutions. Historically higher education in the UK has been shaped by a dual system: elite universities on the one hand and polytechnics and other higher education institutions on the other. Despite the formal equivalence of both degrees, the two institution types faced different financing, target populations, admission procedures and subjects taught. Nevertheless, in survey data they are often indistinguishable. We overcome this problem using a multiple imputation technique in the UKHLS and BHPS datasets. We examine the validity of inference based on imputed values using Monte Carlo simulations. We also verify that the imputed values are consistent with university graduation rates computed using the universe of undergraduate students in the UK.
-- 1 Does intelligence shield children from the effects of parental unemployment? -- 2 Fertility Choice and Intelligence in Developed Countries -- 3 From bad to worse: long-term effects of recession in adolescence -- 4 Multiple Imputation of University Degree Attainment

Thesis (MComm (Economics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007.
The aim of this study was to analyse educational performance in Mozambique by 1) comparing the determinants of education in developing countries with the situation in country, 2) understanding the supply factors that influence enrolments and education attainment, 3) evaluating the efficiency of the current education system, 4) analysing the importance to education of each of the demand determinants and of school quality on education attainment, and 5) contributing information to assist policy makers with decisions regarding education. Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world. More than half of the population lives below the poverty line and the general adult literacy is only 54%. The education system is mainly characterized by weak performance as a whole, high grade repetition, high dropout rates, low survival rates, high pupil-teacher ratios and a low percentage of qualified teachers. In addition to this, there is a great deal of inequality in education achievement by province, place of residence, income group and gender. After this preliminary analysis, chapter II (literature review) highlighted critical inputs and served as a guideline for the following chapters of this study. The dimensions analysed in the followed chapters were: 1) Supply Factors, 2) Demand determinants and 3) School Quality. Chapter III therefore consisted of a descriptive analysis of the most important supply ...

This research explored two interrelated issues in development economics. FIrstly, it investigated the importance of secondary and tertiary education for long-run growth of low-income economics. Secondly, it examined possible ways to invest in these higher levels of education. It draws on insights on these two issues to highlight lessons for Rwanda where policy makers have set out plans to build a knowledge economy in which science and technology would form the basis of the modern enterprise.

Linking education, science and technology with national development is a subject of increasing concern in many developing countries. In this dissertation, we have studied empirically the contribution, or lack of it, which public investment in education, science and technology has made to the attainment of development objectives in Cameroon since 1960. Using a small computable macroeconometric model of Cameroon incorporating some major relevant quantitative aspects of the knowledge sector, we have investigated the effects on that sector and on the overall economic system of increased education- and research-service resources. We have also analyzed some of the major qualitative factors that are important in this sector.
Our results suggest that, given existing patterns of education, science and technology in Cameroon, the contribution of public investment in this sector may be small compared to the potential contribution suggested in the literature. The implications of these results are examined for policy-making and planning at the national level.

Orientadores: Waldir José de Quadros, Alexandre Gori Maia
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia
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Resumo: O objetivo principal deste trabalho é avaliar a dinâmica dos gastos das famílias brasileiras em educação sob o impacto concorrente das alterações populacionais, econômicas e sociais ocorridas na primeira década dos anos 2000. Dessa maneira, é possível traçar o percurso recente, facilitando a identificação de alguma intervenção necessária. A hipótese central é de que esse tipo de despesas, tendo sofrido interferência desses condicionantes, principalmente em relação à renda conduziriam ao aumento dos gastos em educação das famílias nesse período, apesar de se vivenciar um processo de transição demográfica que desacelera a necessidade contínua de criação de vagas na escola. Isso porque o crescimento da massa de renda da sociedade brasileira aconteceu para todas as camadas sociais, já que se supõe uma associação entre rendimentos e gastos com educação. Além disso, a intensificação da utilização da rede privada de ensino em todos os níveis implicaria em crescimento dos gastos por aluno, o que reforçaria a hipótese central. Uma hipótese secundária é a de que há diferenças expressivas nos padrões de gastos das famílias, que variam de acordo com o nível educacional a que o aluno esteja vinculado, básico ou superior, e da rede de ensino, pública ou privada. A combinação entre o nível e a rede de ensino reflete em certa medida os limites e possibilidades de orçamento e valores sociais das famílias brasileiras. A terceira hipótese é que as extremas desigualdades socioeconômicas existentes no Brasil também se reproduzem nos padrões de gastos com educação das famílias. Nesse caso, a combinação de alguns atributos como: sexo, raça/cor, idade, escolaridade, renda e região de residência implicariam em padrões de gastos em educação substancialmente distintos. Para comprovar ou não as hipóteses relacionadas este trabalho foi organizado em quatro capítulos. No primeiro, será exposto o panorama da educação no Brasil e no mundo, bem como os principais trabalhos e teóricos que refletem e influenciam o pensamento contemporâneo em matéria de educação. No segundo capítulo, procura-se contextualizar o período de estudo, descrevendo a dinâmica da renda, da população e dos gastos da sociedade brasileira. O terceiro capítulo vai ater-se aos gastos em educação e incorporará a dinâmica regional da população. No quarto capítulo, examina-se o impacto isolado de algumas características sociais e demográficas sobre as despesas em educação das famílias brasileiras procurando captar sua evolução durante a década e finalmente, na conclusão, se indica algumas proposições
Abstract: The main objective of this work is to evaluate the dynamics of the expenditures of Brazilian families in education under the concurrent impact of population, economic and social changes during the first decade of the 2000s. This way, it is possible to trace the recent development by facilitating the identification of any necessary intervention. The central hypothesis is that this type of expenditure influenced by these conditions, income in special would have been increased in this period despite the demographic transition, which has reduced the speed of the continuous necessity of creating school vacancy. This is especially due to the growth in total income of Brazilian society which occurred for all strata of society, since it assumes an association between income and education spending. Moreover, the private sector¿s enlargement for all educational levels would necessarily result in the growth of per student expenditure which reinforces the main hypothesis. A secondary hypothesis is that there are expressive differences in the families expenditures¿ patterns which varies according to the student level; elementary or higher education, and the student administrative entailment; public or private school. The arrangement between the student educational level and its administrative entailment reflects the limits, budget possibilities and social family¿s worth. A third hypothesis supports that the extreme socioeconomic inequalities that exist in Brazil also reproduce over the families educational expenditures. Therefore, the conjunction of some characteristics such as: sex, race/color, age, schooling, income and area of residence would imply in substantial distinct education expenditures patterns. To achieve the confirmation or non-confirmation of the listed hypothesis this paper is organized into four chapters. The first chapter presents the landscape of education in Brazil and in the world, as well as major works and writers that reflect and influence contemporary thinking in education. In the second chapter, the objective is to contextualize the study period describing the dynamics of the income, population and expenditures of the Brazilian society disaggregating them into various items. The third chapter will stick to spending on education and incorporate regional population dynamics. The fourth chapter examines the isolated impact of social and population characteristics on expenditure on education of Brazilian families looking to capture its evolution. Finally, the considerations will suggest some consensus¿ measures that could take place in a short period of time
Doutorado
Economia Social e do Trabalho
Doutora em Desenvolvimento Econômico

Bibliography: leaves 148-155. This thesis investigates whether cross-country variations in schooling quality (the productivity of the time spent studying) affect the empirical results in studies of economic growth based on an augmented method of Solow. It was found that schooling quality is positively and statistically significantly associated with mean economic growth rates in regressions which control for physical capital investment rates, population growth rates and secondary school enrolment rates. Education levels of parents, hours of homework and the non-teaching duties of teachers were also significant determinants.

This research was undertaken to study the effect of education on small farm revenues and profits in Kenya. Schooling (defined as the number of school standards completed by the farm operator) was used as the most important source of education. It was hypothesized that schooling has a positive effect on farm revenues and profits. The effect of other sources of information viz; extension contact, demonstration attendance and baraza attendance on farm revenues and profits were also investigated. The research was done using regression analysis where these variables and other farm activity relevant variables were fitted in regression equations. The choice of these variables were based on economic theory, Kenya small farm characteristics and the objective of the study. Several factors would qualify as supporting evidence for the argument that educated farmers are more productive. We expect educated farmers to be more informed in terms of use of new production technologies. Education as a source of human capital also enhances the productive abilities of human beings and also enables those who have invested in education to use their resources more efficiently as well as adjusting to new "ways of producing more efficiently". In the current study we find that schooling of the farm operator is positively related to level of expenditure on farm purchased variable inputs. This indicates that education enhances adoption of new technologies and innovativeness. Further it was shown that farmers with more education earned more value added per acre from their farm business compared to their less educated counterparts. On the overall farm activity, farmers with eight or more standards of schooling earned upto 80.2% in value added per acre compared to those who had no schooling. The regression estimates were done on a stepwise procedure where farm specific enterprises were estimated separately and then aggregated and estimated as one farm sector. Thus a crop equation, a livestock equation and a total farm output equation were estimated. This model was then developed into a variable profit function. A simple linear function procedure was used in the regression analysis. In all the estimated value added equations the schooling coefficient was positive and significant at 5% level two tail t-test. As we move from farm specific activities to a farm aggregate output model and lastly to value added model the schooling coefficient increased in size confirming the positive role of education in allocative effect. These results show that schooling plays an important role in allocation of other purchased inputs and also choice of crop mix and input selection. The estimated marginal return to schooling of farm operator in the profit function was Kshs.281. In an earlier function where schooling of the farm operator was fitted into a total farm income equation the estimated marginal return to schooling was Kshs.778.89. When schooling of the farm operator is allowed to interact with extension service the estimated interaction variable coefficient is negative showing the two act as substitute sources of knowledge, and the schooling coefficient increased in size showing that those who had both schooling and extension service earned comparatively more farm revenues. The role of other educative factors like extension service, demonstration attendance, and baraza attendance in influencing agricultural production was investigated. Regression results showed that extension contact had a negative and significant effect on farm revenues and profits. Demonstration and baraza attendance had similar effects on farm revenues and profits. In the value added function hired labour variable was fitted as the cost of hired labour per day. The estimated coefficient for this variable was positive and significant at 5%. The estimated coefficient for this variable shows hired labour is not optimally used, and farmers can increase their farm profits by hiring more labour. When this variable was fitted as the wage rate paid to hired labour per day the estimated coefficient was positive and significant. These results indicate that cost of hired labour depends on its quality. In the sales function hired labour was specified as mandays of hired labour per year and the estimated coefficient which reflects the shadow price of labour was higher than average hired labour wage rate implying that this factor is underemployed. In the sales function the estimated coefficient for the value of purchased inputs variable indicates that there is an element of underutilization of these inputs. This variable is fitted in value terms and in profit maximizing conditions the estimated coefficient is expected to be no different from unit. However, the estimated coefficient for this variable is approximately 2.5 showing a shilling spent on purchased inputs will bring forth 2.5 shillings. Thus an increase in the use of purchased inputs will increase farm revenues. Results show evidence of regional differences in farmer productivity and utilization of purchased inputs in favour of Central province. The study is based on the 1982 CBS-IDS-World Bank Household Survey of Rural Kenya data set.
Land and Food Systems, Faculty of
Graduate

This thesis is comprised of three essays that examine three contemporary themes in UK higher education that have emerged, particularly over the past two decades, within an expanding higher education sector. The first essay focuses on the issue of Vice Chancellor (VC) pay, which has risen considerably in real terms since the early 1990s. Vice Chancellors are among the highest paid public sector CEOs and the level and annual increase in pay generates an annual furore in the popular media and from teaching and lecturers' unions. Specifically, we investigate whether VC pay awards are justified, given that VCs now require greater managerial skills than in the past due to the complexity and the size of the institutions they now manage. We find that VC pay is related to success in furthering university expansion and is associated with success in widening participation in accordance with current government policy, which suggests that there may be scope in introducing some performance element in VC pay determination. There is also evidence that internal pay structure and external comparable pay are important in determining VC pay. The second essay is set against the backdrop of rising student debt and examines student debt expectation. We offer a novel contribution to the limited literature that exists on this issue. We find that expected debt is related to student demographic and socio-economic characteristics, future earnings expectations, student time preference and risk taking behaviour. Moreover, the evidence suggests that the current system of student financial support has little effect on debt expectations and may compromise HE participation particularly amongst students in the lower socio-economic groups. The final essay investigates the upward drift in the percentage share of ‘good' degree classifications in UK higher education, which increased considerably since the mid- 2000s and coincides with a rise in the maximum limit universities are allowed to charge potential students for tuition. We find evidence of grade inflation in UK higher education since the mid-2000s which coincides with the sharp increase in fees students were obliged to pay. Thus, degree classifications may lose their worth as signals of graduate ability and the current system of degree classification may need some revision if correct signals of graduate ability and effort are to be sent to interested parties.

Defence date: 22 June 2021
Examining Board: Professor Árpád Ábrahám (European University Institute and University of Bristol); Professor Philipp Kircher (Cornell University); Professor Dean Corbae (University of Wisconsin-Madison); Professor Giovanni Gallipoli (University of British Columbia)
In the U.S., 40% of students drop out of college. While dropout decisions may constitute an efficient response to students' discovering their low academic ability, they may be inefficient if an able student drops out due to adverse financial shocks. In my job market paper, `The Macroeconomic Cost of College Dropouts', I investigate whether the observed dropout rates generate inefficiency by decomposing driving forces behind dropouts. I provide empirical evidence that the probability of dropping out of college is strongly associated with both ability and finances, even after controlling for other factors. I build a quantitative general-equilibrium overlapping generations model, where individuals face incomplete information on their academic ability and uncertainty about the generosity of financial aid. The model simulations show that uncertainty regarding ability is responsible for 20% of the observed dropout rates, while uncertainty regarding financial aid explains up to 53%. Pursuing a policy that eliminates uncertainty about the college aid would increase the social welfare by as much as 2.3%, benefiting both college graduates and non-college graduates. Such a policy is largely self-financing due to endogenous improvements in skill allocation and associated growth in GDP. In my second project, `Education Affordability and Income Inequality' with F.Wang, we address the broad question of what explains the observed income inequality in the U.S. Different tax progressivity schedules are often named as the main factor that drive the difference in income inequality between the continental European countries and the U.S. (see Guvenen, Kuruscu, and Ozkan (2014), Holter (2015)). In this paper, we revisit the role of tax progressivity in shaping earnings inequality, taking into account another aspect that differs across these countries: the price of attaining a bachelor's degree. In the U.S., the price is much higher than in continental European countries. The OECD (2018) reports that the direct cost for students to attain a bachelor's degree constitutes $55000 in the U.S., while in Germany it amounts to $5000. Motivated by this observation, we study the role of education affordability in shaping earnings inequality in the context of an overlapping generations model where agents, heterogeneous in terms of learning ability, initial wealth, and productivity, decide whether to attend college, subject to borrowing constraints. After calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, we perform a number of counterfactual experiments. We find that the Gini coefficient for before-tax wage income would decrease by as much as 16:2 percent if the current education policy, the fraction of higher education costs borne by the U.S. government, were replaced with its German counterpart. On the other hand, we find that labor tax progressivity plays a less significant role in explaining earnings inequality. Besides, poor households with medium and medium-high abilities would benefit the most from this education reform. Apart from distributional gains, the hypothetical policy reform would also boost macroeconomic activities by increasing labor productivity. Finally, analyzing the transitional dynamics shows that every new generation would be better off in terms of utilitarian welfare if the current education policy was replaced with its German counterpart. In my third project, `Larger transfers financed with more progressive taxes? On the optimal design of taxes and transfers', co-authored with Axelle Ferriere, Gaston Navarro, Philipp Gr ubener, we focus on the interplay between the two most important tools governments have at their disposal to reduce inequality - the income tax schedule and targeted transfers. Specifically, we study the optimal joint design of targeted transfers and income taxes. Within a simple heterogeneous-household framework, we derive two analytical results. First, higher transfers reduce the degree of optimal income tax progressivity. Second, optimal transfers are positive under mild conditions on primitives. This is due to both efficiency and redistribution reasons. Large transfers increase the fiscal burden for the government. Lowering marginal tax rates at the top incentivizes labor supply, which helps the government to raise sufficient revenue. Also, having the transfer in place provides some redistribution, reducing the need for higher tax progressivity. We then quantify the optimal tax-and-transfer system in a richer incomplete-market model with a realistic wealth distribution and unemployment risk. The model features novel exible functional forms for progressive income taxes and means-tested transfers. Relative to the current U.S. fiscal system, our preliminary calibration suggests that the optimal policy consists of more generous means-tested transfers, which phase-out at a slower rate, together with less progressive income taxes.
-- Part 1. The Macroeconomic Cost of College Dropouts -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Empirical Analysis -- 1.3 The Model Economy -- 1.4 Calibration -- 1.5 Model Fit -- 1.6 Model Mechanism -- 1.7 Policy -- 1.8 Conclusions -- Part 2. Education Affordability and Earnings Inequality -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Relation to The Literature -- 2.3 The Model Economy -- 2.4 Calibration -- 2.5 Model Dynamics -- 2.6 Policy Experiments -- 2.7 Transitional Dynamics -- 2.8 Conclusion -- Part 3. Larger transfers financed with more progressive taxes? On the optimal design of taxes and transfers -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 An Analytical Model -- 3.3 Quantitative Model -- 3.4 Conclusion

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Education has always occupied a central role in the discipline of economics, featuring prominently in the theoretical constructs of the discipline and, more recently, in their empirical applications. While one can trace the origins of Human Capital theory all the way back to Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’, the two major advances in our understanding of education’s role in economic development transpired in the last 50 years. The first was half way through the 20th century with the work of work of Mincer (1958), Schultz (1961) and particularly that of Becker (1962) who formalized the idea of Human Capital. The second advance was at the turn of the 21st century when Hanushek and Kimko (and later Wößmann) incorporated measures of education quality into their models of economic growth. This latest strand of research serves as the point of departure for this thesis, placing education quality at the centre of the discussion. The thesis begins by focussing on the South African case and highlighting three broad issues that characterise education in the country: (1) the high levels of inequality that can be seen when comparing student performance by race, language, geographic location and socioeconomic status. New evidence is presented to show that South Africa does indeed have two public schooling systems, reiterating and confirming the findings of other South African scholars. (2) Using intra-survey benchmarks of student achievement, Chapter 2 develops a new method of quantifying learning deficits in mathematics by using three different datasets covering grades 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9. The learning gap between the poorest 60% of students and the wealthiest 20% of students is found to be approximately three grade-levels in grade 3 and grows to between four and five grade-levels by grade 9. (3) The focus then shifts to the complex issue of language and performance, which is addressed in Chapter 3. Here the aim is to exploit an unusual occurrence whereby a large group of South African students were tested twice, one month apart, on the same test in different languages. Using a simplified difference-in-difference methodology it becomes possible to identify the causal impact of writing a test in English when English is not a student’s home language. The final two chapters of the thesis widen the remit of analysis to include 11 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, viz. Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Here the aim is to develop a composite measure of education access and education quality by combining household data (DHS) on grade completion and survey data (SACMEQ) on cognitive outcomes. The new measure, termed access-to-literacy and access-to-numeracy is reported for all countries and important sub-groups in Chapter 4. The method is then used in Chapter 5 to compare access-to-learning over a period of increased access to schooling (2000-2007). In all countries there was an improvement in access to literacy and numeracy, challenging the widely held perception that there is always an access-quality trade-off in education. In particular, girls and those in relatively poor households benefited most from this improvement in access to literacy and numeracy. The thesis ultimately concludes that if children are to realize their full potential, the expansion of physical access to schooling in the developing world must be accompanied by meaningful learning opportunities. The acquisition of knowledge, skills and values must be the central aim of educational expansion.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Onderwys het nog altyd ʼn rol in ekonomie as vakgebied gespeel. Dit is verstaanbaar, want vaardighede en onderwys was nog altyd ʼn prominente deel van die teoretiese konstrukte en meer onlangs ook van empiriese toepassings in die dissipline. Terwyl die oorsprong van menslike-kapitaalteorie teruggevoer kan word na Adam Smith se Wealth of Nations, het die twee grootste deurbrake met die verstaan van onderwys se rol in ekonomiese ontwikkeling in die laaste vyftig jaar plaasgevind. Die werk van Mincer (1958), Schultz (1961) en veral Becker (1962), wat in die middel van die vorige eeu formele gestalte aan die begrip ‘menslike kapitaal’ gegee het, was die eerste deurbraak. Die tweede deurbraak was teen die eeuwending toe Hanushek en Kimko (en later Wößmann) maatstawwe van onderwysgehalte in hulle ekonomiese groeimodelle begin insluit het. Hierdie nuwe tak van die navorsing plaas onderwys vierkant in die sentrum en dien as vertrekpunt vir hierdie proefskrif. Die proefskrif begin deur aandag op drie breë kwessies te vestig wat kenmerkend is van onderwys in Suid-Afrika: (1) Die hoë vlakke van ongelykheid volgens ras, taal, geografiese gebied en sosio-ekonomiese status in studente se prestasie. (2) In hoofstuk 2 word ʼn nuwe metode aangebied om leeragterstrande kwantitatief te meet met behulp van norme van leerlingprestasie in skoolvlak-opnames vir grade 3, 4, 5, 6 en 9. Daar word bevind dat die leergaping tussen die armste 60% en die rykste 20% van studente in graad 3 ongeveer drie jaar is en teen graad 9 tot vier of vyf jaar aangroei. (3) Die fokus verskuif daarna na die verwikkelde kwessie van taal en skoolprestasie, wat in hoofstuk 3 bespreek word. Hier is die doel om die ongewone geval uit te buit waar ʼn groot groep Suid-Afrikaanse leerlinge binne die verloop van ʼn maand tweemaal dieselfde toets geskryf het, maar in twee verskillende tale. Met behulp van ʼn vereenvoudigde verskil-tussen-verskille-benadering is dit moontlik om te bepaal hoe groot die kousale effek is waar ʼn leerling wie se moedertaal nie Engels is nie die toets in Engels moes skryf. Die laaste twee hoofstukke van die proefskrif bevat ʼn wyer analise van elf lande in Sub-Sahara Afrika, naamlik Kenia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mosambiek, Namibia, Suid-Afrika, Swaziland, Tanzanië, Uganda, Zambië en Zimbabwe. Die doel is om ʼn saamgestelde maatstaf van onderwys-toegang en -gehalte te skep deur huishoudingsdata (DHS) oor graadvoltooiing en skoolopnamedata (SACMEQ) oor kognitiewe uitkomste te kombineer. Die nuwe maatstaf, genaamd ‘toegang-tot-geletterdheid’ en ‘toegang-tot-syfervaardigheid’, word in hoofstuk 4 vir al die lande en subgroepe opgestel. Die metode word dan in hoofstuk 5 gebruik om toegang-tot-leergeleenthede te vergelyk oor ʼn periode waartydens skooltoegang verbreed het (2000-2007). Daar was ʼn verbetering in toegang tot geletterdheid en syfervaardigheid in alle lande, teenstrydig met die wyd-gehuldigde siening dat daar altyd ʼn afruiling tussen toegang en gehalte van onderwys bestaan. In besonder word bevind dat meisies sowel as kinders uit arm huishoudings die meeste by die toename in toegang tot geletterdheid en syfervaardigheid gebaat het. Die gevolgtrekking is dat die vervulling van die potensiaal van kinders in die ontwikkelende wêreld vereis dat die verbreding van fisiese toegang tot skole met beduidende leergeleenthede gepaard moet gaan. Die aanleer van kennis, vaardighede en waardes moet die sentrale doel van die uitbreiding van onderwysgeleenthede wees.

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The objective of this research is to provide recommendations and guidelines for building and maintaining a comprehensive Continuing Education Units (CEU) and qualification tracking system specifically for the Continuing Education Units (CEU) and Qualification program. The guidance includes topics ranging from designing, managing, and implementing a tracking program, through post-implementation of the program. This research includes the training needs of all personnel within the IP community, from users to supervisors to executive-level mangers extending to include designated sponsors/mentors and external subject matter experts. The key research focus of this thesis is to examine the risk and cost benefits in automating the training record for the Information Professional community and further discuss interface design issues and considerations to maximize the flexibility and functionality provided by automation.
Lieutenant, United States Navy Reserve

In this thesis an assessment is made of the contribution of economic theory to the debate on government expenditure allocations to schooling in developing countries. Publicly provided Black schooling in South Africa is taken as the case study and viewed in the light of historical perspectives, as well as human capital, rent-seeking, welfare, liberal and contractarian theory. From an historical perspective, the willingness of Blacks to enrol at schools under National Party control, despite the poor quality of such schooling and lack of labour market incentives for them to do so, is paradoxical. It leads to the conclusion that under National Party administration the private benefit of Black schooling exceeded the private cost; a situation which is argued to have been influenced by rent-seeking. The propositions that government expenditure on Black schooling is a profitable social investment, and that rent-seeking has influenced the allocations of government expenditure on Black and White education are then investigated. Empirical support is found for both propositions, but it is based on the use of controversial methods and measures. The provision of education by the state can be justified on many economic grounds; the most popular being that this improves welfare by bringing about a better distribution of income or by redressing market failure. However, as there are major problems with this approach, it is concluded that neoclassical welfare theory fails to provide a persuasive justification for current levels of government expenditure on Black schooling. The provision of Black schooling by the state can also be justified in terms of liberal objectives. Classical and reform liberalism and their respective conclusions are examined. Marxist views on the role played by the state in the provision of education are also considered, but not found to be appropriate. Two contractarian assessments of the government's role in the provision of Black schooling are also provided in this thesis. They are based on the works of John Rawls (1971 and 1974) and James Buchanan (1986). The approach taken by James Buchanan is argued to be more appropriate to South African circumstances than Rawls's, and it is in the context of the former that problems with respect to public decisions on education and possible solutions to them are discussed. The conclusion of the thesis is that economic theory offers only a limited explanation for government expenditure allocations to Black education in South Africa

The economic turmoil of the past decade has reinvigorated the debate over the use of public funds to support local Extension efforts. State Extension groups across the country have begun to demonstrate their worth in a variety of ways, including attempting to show both the behavioral and economic outcomes of Extension initiatives. However, showing the value of the 4-H Youth Development Program has proved challenging. The benefits of joining youth programs tend to be latent, not fully manifesting for years or even decades until participants mature into adults. Studies are starting to provide insights into the social, physical and mental rewards of joining youth development organizations such as 4-H, but these behavioral outcomes are disproportionally reported when compared to economic studies. From 2012-2013 families enrolled in Oklahoma's 4-H Youth Development Shooting Sports Project were surveyed about their recreational spending habits. Economic contributions for the state of Oklahoma, and impacts on local economies are estimated using primary data and an IMPLAN model. These economic analyses provide estimates of the economic worth of one youth project overseen by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service. Subsequently, policy makers are provided justification of the project not only from a social, physical, and mental perspective, but are additionally provided economic indicators of the project's immediate worth.

Discovering and developing one’s talents significantly increases the likelihood of one leading a meaningful and fulfilling life, realising success in the world, and breaking out of the cycle of poverty. It should be the responsibility of schools to provide opportunities for learners to discover and develop talents that they are passionate about. This passion will then create a self-reinforcing cycle in which learners are more motivated to work hard in school and further develop their talents. Therefore, discovering and developing one’s talents should be seen as both a means to improved education and an end of education itself. This research paper sought to identify the factors limiting township learners from discovering and developing their talents and to make recommendations as to how to mitigate these factors. The researcher used the partnership between the Masinyusane Development Organisation, a local education non-profit organisation, and School A, a secondary school in the township of New Brighton, Port Elizabeth as a case study. Data from the study were carefully analysed and it was concluded that the township learners are not being provided the opportunities necessary, particularly in the schools, to discover and develop their talents. This has resulted in poor academic performance, high drop-out rates, low levels of motivation, confusion with regards to career development, and missed opportunities to break out of the cycle of poverty. The researcher believes this research sheds light on the issue and lays a foundation from which to provide South African township learners with greater opportunities to discover and develop their talents. These opportunities will assist learners in improving their school performance, ensuring that they embark on career paths they will realize success in, and ultimately, in breaking out of the cycle of poverty that traps so many of them.

The study seeks to analyse challenges facing Basic Education in South Africa. There is a major emphasis on the education of the South African people to become responsible, participatory and reflective citizens that contribute to an emerging democracy. However, the government of SA is faced with many challenges that hinder the South African people from becoming an educated nation. This is based on the assumption that education plays a major role in improving the economic status of the nation. The education in South Africa is categorized into sectors, primary, secondary and tertiary which are interlinked through a fine thread that determines the success of individuals. It has been established that a number of factors or problems hinder learners from receiving a good standard of education. These include: parents’ lack of participation in their children’s education and the weak functioning of School Governing Bodies (SGBs) especially in the area of finance and general administration of the school, poor infrastructure and shortage or non-delivery of textbooks. Good leadership in schools is also needed to make sure that teachers attend to their classes diligently and learners take the importance of education seriously. Government needs to ensure that teachers are trained accordingly and schools have adequate basic resources. The qualitative research method was used and no interviews and survey were made during this study. This research will discuss these factors that have been identified as causing the drop in the standard of education in South Africa. The research concludes with an attempt to make some recommendations to improve this situation.

This thesis seeks to contribute to the knowledge of the economics of education in post-conflict, by proposing an economic analysis of such a setting as a hybrid socio-economic environment, where conflict, despite having ended, has still an impact. It uses an applied economics approach to analyse demand for primary and secondary education and one of the main economic drivers of their demand, returns to education. The focus of study is the post-conflict country of Timor-Leste. In this analysis it proposes and tests economic mechanisms through which conflict may have impacted the returns to education observed in post-conflict Timor-Leste, finding evidence of two significant channels: reduction of productivity and scarcity of qualified human resources. In support of this analysis, it builds a dataset with a novel indicator of political control during conflict that applies in the empirical analysis of returns to education. In the next chapter it seeks to establish evidence of medium-run impacts of conflict on the demand for primary education in Timor-Leste, proposing and testing an empirical methodology to do so. Finally, it proposes and analyses an empirical model of the demand for secondary education in Timor-Leste that integrates the hypothesis of medium-run impacts of conflict. In the process it finds evidence suggesting that, while some of the channels negatively impacted by conflict significantly affect demand for education, a medium-run positive effect might exist, particularly in the form of higher preferences for secondary education among those that experienced more violence during the conflict. Less robust findings of equally positive medium-run effects of conflict are found in the demand for primary education.

Thesis (MDF)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
This paper investigates the impact of education on economic growth in South Africa using annual panel data from 1990 to 2011, controlling for regional differences. Education is believed to be an important factor in developing an economy. The theoretical basis of education on economic growth comes from the endogenous growth theory. The endogenous growth theorists believed that investing in education is linked to an increase in efficiency and productivity of labour. It can be argued that by boosting cognitive and other skills, education makes labour more productive and accelerates innovation and technological progress, bringing higher economic growth. The nature of the data allowed for panel estimation techniques to be employed and the fixed effects and random effects models were considered in a Generalised Least Squares estimation framework, with the final estimation model informed objectively by the Hausman test. Education was found to be positively related to GDP, with variations across provinces observed. The results have implications for both policy and further research, which are outlined in the final chapter.

In spite of widespread critiques about the neoliberalisation of higher education and its production of citizenship in relation to the market, transformation of students into profit-maximising individuals, and the vitalisation of a self-enterprising subjectivity, many of these claims remain under-examined with respect to cultural production. The objective of this research is to explore the neoliberal production of middle-class citizenship through the lens of educated non-elite local youth in Singapore. By combining geographical, sociological and anthropological insights about education and youth, I develop a theoretically informed ethnographic case study to examine how this segment of young people reproduce themselves as middle-class citizens. The research is based on eleven months of fieldwork at a local private institute of higher education, where I hanged around, talked to, and observed Singaporean young people between ages 18 and 25 studying for their first degree. The ethnographic materials are written up into four substantive papers, demonstrating the ways in which educated non-elite Singaporean youth in private higher education engage with state disseminated ideas around neoliberal accumulation and human capital formation. I argue that these students draw on class-based sensibilities and feelings to produce vibrant forms of normativities, subjectivities, and politics that pose a challenge to dominant assumptions of a "hollowed out" citizenship under neoliberalism. The research makes two overall interventions in geographic and social scientific writings about neoliberal restructuring of higher education and its implications for youth citizenship. First, it cautions against a straightforward claim that neoliberal technologies of control have extended market values into citizenship subjectivity and, with it, the erosion of progressive political projects. Second, it provides a much-needed analysis of middle-class citizenship formation among young people caught at the losing end of a diversifying educational landscape.

A new environmental immersion school has opened in Canada. This case study examines early stages of the project's implementation in order to contribute to an understanding of how best to implement environmental education in schools.
Examination of the literature on educational change led to an analytical framework which included: (1) Characteristics of the innovation; (2) Strategies and tactics used; (3) Contextual characteristics; (4) Macro sociopolitical factors. This was used to categorize qualitative data collected through interviews, observation, a questionnaire and documents.
The study uncovered a number of obstacles to implementation in the school, principally: (1) Conceptual problems about environmental education; (2) Poorly defined school philosophy and goals; (3) Difficulties in coordinating the project between individual efforts and departments; (4) A hiatus between administration and teacher perceptions.
The case study provided insight on the process of curriculum implementation as well as specific issues relating to environmental education and the theme of sustainable development.

The emergence of the global economy has forced the Australian government to revise economic strategies and to seek institutional changes. Higher education's new roles in research and human resource development, have been manifested in university commercialization activities. Mindful that Universities are prestige rather than profit maximizers, this study applies Schumpeter's (1942) theoretical model for the survival of a firm under financial stress. The model's responses, extended to education by Leslie and Miller (1973), include new products, new markets, restructuring, increased productivity and new supply factors. University entrepreneurial activities have monetary and non-monetary impacts. The non-monetary costs and benefits of Australian university enterprise were studied by Leslie (1992) and Leslie and Harrold (1993). In this study, academics at Curtin University of Technology (Perth, Western Australia) were selected as entrepreneurial or non-entrepreneurial subjects and surveyed on the non-monetary costs and benefits of entrepreneurial activities affecting Curtin's teaching, research and public service mission. This data were analyzed and subsequently compared with data obtained by Leslie (1992). Differences in academic perceptions were found among the Curtin respondents by gender, academic status, discipline area, entrepreneurship and non-entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial revenue importance. Using the Leslie data inter-institutional differences were examined and an order of entrepreneurial institutional types proposed, with Curtin University described as a frontier entrepreneurial university. The taxonomy of costs and benefits developed by Leslie (1992) was revised with the addition of personal social costs, stress, networking and professional development. An estimate was made of the dollar value of non-monetary items; non-monetary benefits were three times the dollar value of monetary benefits; non-monetary costs were less than half the monetary cost levels. The ratio of non-monetary costs to benefits was 1:3.5. Academics in the disciplines of engineering and science had more favorable perceptions of entrepreneurial costs and benefits than respondents in business studies. Health science respondents were described as having pessimistic perceptions. Future research may look at the levels of commercial revenue and investigate the effects of the amount of financial success or failure on the entrepreneurial efforts of academics. In university enterprise successes seem to foster success and the favorable perceptions of academics.

O propósito desta tese consiste em estimar o efeito da educação sobre os salários no Brasil. Utiliza-se, o número de escolas em cada estado no ano de nascimento do indivíduo como instrumento para lidar com o problema de endogeneidade da variável educação. É feita também uma descrição histórica das principais políticas educacionais e suas mudanças, que afetaram a educação brasileira desde Dutra até Figueiredo. Os resultados mostram que a variável número de escolas no ano de nascimento tem uma relação positiva com a probabilidade de escolarização, sendo que as gerações de Geisel e Médici têm uma menor probabilidade de escolarização do que as de Figueiredo. Os resultados apontam para uma diminuição significativa dos retornos à educação quando utilizamos o método de variáveis instrumentais.
The aim of this dissertation is to estimate the impact of education on wages in Brazil We use the number of schools in the state and year when the individual was born as instruments for his education level. We also make a historical description of the main educational policies which affected the Brazilian education system since president Dutra´s term until president Figueiredo´s. The results show that the number of schools in the individual´s year of birth bears a positive relationship with his education, and that the cohorts born during the Geisel and Médici´s terms had lower education than in Figueiredo´s. The main results show that the returns to education decrease quite substantially when the method of instrumental variables is used.

This study examined the extent of research and teaching on higher education programs in the United States that focuses on for-profit higher education. This descriptive study used a 30-item questionnaire to gather the information reported here. This survey instrument was sent to the entire population of interest. This population was made up of all of the programs in higher education that are listed in the ASHE Higher Education Program Directory, which is produced by the Association for the Study of Higher Education. The results of this research show that little research and teaching is being done that has a primary focus on for-profit higher education. Recommendations on how to address this are provided.

In this study, I aimed to examine the impact of different levels of education on real GDP (and real GDP per workforce) in Turkey, and hence the relationship between different levels of education and the standard of living is estimated by panel data techniques. The panel data set in the study is constructed by pooling 67 provinces of Turkey over the period of 1975-2000. Furthermore, in the empirical work, two models are employed: the model introduced by Knowles (1997) and the augmented Solow model with different levels of education. The panel data estimation of the Knowles&rsquo
s model implies that the secondary level of schooling has the greatest contribution to real GDP, while the augmented Solow model implies that the higher level of schooling has the largest impact on real GDP per workforce.

The purpose of the study was to analyze current procedures utilized for financing textbooks and related instructional materials by Indiana public school corporations and public school corporations in selected states. Respective practices were examined in order to determine feasible methods/alternatives for Indiana school corporations to use in overcoming the contemporary financial and administrative dilemma which existed in the 1985-86 school year.A descriptive questionnaire was developed from a review of literature and with the assistance of colleagues. Data obtained by the instrument were analyzed using frequency tabulations and percentages. Based on information gained from the study and data collected in superintendents in Indiana, solutions to financing instructional materials for Indiana school corporations were determined.Data collected supported the following conclusions: 1. Public school corporations in Indiana charge fees for textbooks and related instructional materials and are experiencing difficulties in collecting textbook rental and related fees from parents or guardians of school children.2. The use of small claims court for recovering fees is not an effective method for most public school corporations in Indiana.3. Township trustees and/or county councils should pay for textbooks and instructional materials of students whose parents or guardians are declared by the courts to be indigent.4. The current formula for determining textbook rental rates is satisfactory.5. Legislation should be adopted to permit public school corporations to increase revenue in order to finance textbooks and related instructional materials.6. To be in concert with other states in the United States and more specifically within the Great Lakes Region, public school students should be supplied textbooks and related instructional materials without charge.7. The location and size of school corporations have implications to problems existing in public school corporations when administering textbook rental programs.8. Lack of additional finance has restricted public school corporations in implementing new programs to be funded by the general fund budget.9. Based on the average rankings of ten regions, public school corporations in Regions I, II, and VI encountered the greatest difficulty in financing textbooks and related instructional materials. Public school corporations have the least problems in supplying textbooks to school students.10. Based on the average rankings of six enrollment groups, public school corporations in the smallest three groups had the greatest success in financing textbooks and related instructional materials for students.11. Additional costs for school corporations are incurred when interest is paid to publishers for overdue accounts or for installment payment programs.12. School corporations with deficit balances or significantly decreasing balances in textbook rental accounts are in. need of assistance in collecting outstanding fees from constituents and/or means of generating sufficient revenue to account for required textbooks and related instructional materials for students.

This thesis consists of three essays on the economics of education and migration. The first essay analyzes the effects of remittances on public education spending in migrants’ source countries. The second essay studies the impact of migration on public education expenditures in migrants’ destination countries. The third essay investigates the effects of public education expenditures on subsequent human capital inequality.
Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation consists of essays studying the impacts of education policies on outcomes measured at three distinct points in the high school to labor force continuum: course taking and academic performance in high school, choice of college and major, and labor market returns to completing college. The chapters are linked by their focus on understanding how these policies affect disadvantaged and under-represented populations, and by their exploitation of exogenous variation in the timing and assignment of treatments to identify causal effects. The first chapter asks whether lack of information about ability helps explain why high-performing students from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to under-invest in their education. In the presence of uncertainty, an information shock may lead individuals to revise their beliefs and decision-making. To explore this question, I examine an individualized signal of academic aptitude known as "AP Potential'' that is provided in Preliminary SAT (PSAT) reports. The signal provides information about students' aptitude for Advanced Placement (AP), a national program that offers college-level courses and exams in high school. In the United States, participation in AP has become a key step on the path to admission into selective four-year colleges. I begin by collecting high-frequency panel data on subjective beliefs from students in Oakland, California. Students stated their expected performance on the PSAT, beliefs about their abilities, and expectations about future academic outcomes before and after receiving their PSAT results reports. This survey data allows me to identify the information shock students experienced from the PSAT. I establish that although the PSAT is, on average, a negative information shock, the AP Potential signal itself contains valuable information: students with the same PSAT score and prior beliefs about own ability who receive the AP Potential signal experience a more positive information shock. The information shock in turn leads students to revise their beliefs about their ability, the number of AP classes they plan to take, and the likelihood that they will attend a four-year college, consistent with a Bayesian updating framework. I focus next on estimating whether the AP Potential signal has a causal effect on the probability of participating in AP and the number of AP classes in which students actually enroll by exploiting the deterministic relationship between PSAT scores and the AP Potential signal in a Regression Discontinuity (RD) design. Both graphical and more formal non-parametric and parametric methods robustly demonstrate that surveyed students on the margin of receiving the signal enroll in approximately one more AP course their junior year, increasing the probability of participation in the AP program by at least 26 percentage points. Given the demographics and performance levels of students at the margin, this effect amounted to increasing the number of high-ability, under-represented high school students taking college-level courses in Oakland. In addition, mismatch between course enrollments and student ability decreased. When I extend this analysis to students in other schools who did not take the survey, I find that the AP Potential signal had no effect on their course enrollment decisions. This finding is equally important, as it indicates that only students who received an explanation of their PSAT results, the AP Potential signal, and ways to use the information exhibited a behavioral response to the signal. The AP Potential message is not especially conspicuous on PSAT reports, so students who were surveyed likely received an intensified treatment. The results suggest that providing a credible, individualized signal of ability is a cost-effective means of increasing human capital investments among disadvantaged students. The second chapter examines how men and women respond to changes in the competitiveness of university admissions. Experimental research has shown that women respond to competition differently than men, which could help explain gender gaps in math performance and selection into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs. A growing body of work has found suggestive evidence that these relationships also exist in practical educational settings. However, exogenous variation in competition has been restricted to the experimental literature, leaving the differential causal effects of competitive admissions an open question. An affirmative action policy enacted in Venezuela in 2002 provides a unique opportunity to explore how men and women's academic performance and college application decisions respond to changes in competition. The policy led to exogenous shocks in the competitiveness of the university admissions process, effectively increasing competition for socioeconomically advantaged students and decreasing competition for disadvantaged students. Students who neither belonged to the advantaged nor disadvantaged groups defined by the policy were unaffected and thus served as a control group. I use a triple-difference approach on the universe of college applicants between 1994 and 2007 to estimate the impact of changes in the level of competition on high school GPA, math and verbal test scores, and the selectivity of college applications by gender. My results suggest that men and women respond differently to changes in the competitiveness of university admissions, consistent with experimental evidence. The results indicate that males, in both the advantaged and disadvantaged groups, did not respond to the policy change. Women, on the other hand, responded strongly, improving their performance in GPA and in the verbal test in response to both the increase in competition and the increased incentive to exert effort provided by affirmative action. One of the main findings, however, is that increased competition led to lower math test scores for women, while reduced competition led women to increase their performance in math. A student's goal should be to maximize the academic index used for admissions, which places equal weight on verbal and math scores. Under time constraints, if women believe they are more effective at improving their verbal scores, they should allocate more time to studying for the verbal test, perhaps even allocating too much time away from studying math, which would result in lower math scores. However, only women who experienced higher levels of competition had lower math scores. Women from the disadvantaged group who experienced less competition improved their math scores, as well as their GPA and verbal scores. The second main finding is that women in the disadvantaged group who experienced less competition applied to more selective programs. In particular, the competitiveness of their top-ranked choice, which should reflect their true preference given the assignment mechanism in place, saw the biggest increase, even net of the effect due to their improved performance. Given the persistence of a wage gender gap despite women's higher educational attainment, how competitive admissions influence sorting into specific universities and majors emerges as a key question. The third chapter, which is a joint work with Ruth Uwaifo appearing in the Economics of Education Review, studies how expanding access to higher education affects college graduates once they reach the labor market. We focus on a major university education reform in Venezuela known as Mission Sucre, which provided free, open-access tertiary education targeted to the poor and marginalized, and its potential impact on returns to university education on non-participants. We begin by finding that returns to education decreased in Venezuela over the period Mission Sucre was introduced, despite a previous upward trend and an economic boom. Although returns to all levels of education declined during this period, the return to university education fell by over 10 percentage points more than other levels. Motivated by these preliminary findings, we evaluate the possible role of Mission Sucre on the significant decline in returns to university education. For our main analysis, we compare the returns to university education and technical education in a difference-in-difference strategy. We focus on these particular levels of education because both are tertiary levels and are more likely to have similar general trends in returns. More importantly, Mission Sucre originally focused on only expanding university education. This allows us to classify those with university education as a treatment group and those with technical education as a potential control group. We find that Mission Sucre led to a 2.7 percentage point decrease in returns to university education of non-participants in the 23-28 age cohort between 2007 and 2008, the year the first cohort of Mission Sucre graduates entered the labor force. Further, states with higher shares of Mission Sucre students had a larger decline in the returns to university education. Specifically, a 1 percent increase in the share of Mission Sucre students led to a 0.4 percentage point decline in the returns to university education. Although we provide ample evidence of the impact of Mission Sucre, we cannot state whether the noted effect of the program is driven solely by an excess supply of skilled labor, or a combination of the excess supply and other negative externalities of the program on nonparticipants, such as a change in the perceived overall quality of public higher education. Nevertheless, our results present a cautionary tale of the short-term effects of a rapid and large expansion in access to university education.

Chapter one of this thesis examines one of the largest primary school construction program, INPRES SD, in late 1970s in Indonesia. Using the variation across regions in the number of schools constructed and the variation across birth cohorts, I show that in densely populated areas, primary school construction did not affect primary school attainment rate. More surprisingly, the program decreased secondary school attainment rate for both men and women due to a crowding out of teacher resources. Chapter two of this thesis examines how education distribution affects the marriage market, in particular, female marriage age. I first develop a two-to-one dimensional matching model with transferable utility in an OLG framework, in which the marital surplus allows complementarity between men's education and both characteristics of women: education and youth, to understand how female marriage age is affected by others' education.I then use INPRES SD as a quasi-natural experiment and find that a woman marries earlier and the spousal age gap increases when fewer women in her birth cohort graduate from secondary school and the education distribution of their potential husbands does not change.The empirical finding suggests that men's education and women's young age are complementary in generating the marital surplus in the current setting. Chapter three of this thesis examines how hukou system affects the marriage market in China. I build a bidimensional matching model in which individuals are determined by a continuous attribute (that indicates social economic status) and a discrete attribute (hukou status, either rural or urban). Urban hukou is more valuable for men than women since it's more likely for a woman to move to her husband's location upon marriage in a patrilocal society. The model gives predictions on the matching patterns which are validated using the China 2000 0.095% sample census.

Defence date: 27 May 2005
Examining board: Prof. Giuseppe Bertola, Università di Torino, supervisor ; Prof. Michael Haliassos, University of Cyprus ; Prof. Salvador Ortigueira, EUI ; Prof. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, Brown University
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Examining Board: Stefano Gagliarducci, University of Rome Tor Vergata Luigi Guiso, Supervisor, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance Andrea Ichino, EUI Kjell Salvanes, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration.
Defence date: 18 December 2013
First made available online on 4 February 2014.
In the first part of the thesis (Chapters 1 to 4), we analyze the near-universal gender gap reversal in secondary and tertiary education. In virtually all countries, males show a greater dispersion in ability test scores relative to females. We show that this simple fact, combined with an increase in the returns to education across cohorts, is sufficient to reproduce the gender gap reversal observed internationally. We bould a model that generates a hump-shaped relationship between the enrollment rate in education and the female-to-male ratio among the enrolled that is consistent with the data. From time-series data on enrollment rates in education by sex, we generate country estimates for gender di erences in ability distribution using our model. Our estimates highly correlate with cross-country gender differences in test score distributions found in PISA. We also assess the validity of our theory against two alternative explanations for the gender gap dynamics: changes in social norms, and improvements in females' relative performance at school over time. The data does not support the predictions of the alternative hypotheses, while bringing further support to our theory. In the second part of the thesis (Chapter 5), using Finnish high school data, I examine the relationship between peer composition and the causal e ect of school choice on high school exit examination outcomes. To discern the causal effect of school choice, I exploit over 300 regression discontinuity designs that result naturally from the Finnish educational system that allocates pupils to high schools according to their ninth grade grade point average and announced preferences. I find strong evidence that high school choice matters in Finland and that it is related to peer composition. The class composition effect, however, is associated with peer homogeneity rather than average peer quality. I find that a standard deviation change in the homogeneity of peers is positively associated with a 0.02 to 0.13 standard deviation change in the exam results. I also find that the average effect of being marginally above the entrance threshold reduces slightly but significantly the performance of the pupil. This unexpected finding might be a sign of overconfidence on the part of the pupils in making their school choice.