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Abstract: This paper has two main objectives. First, it aims to analyse the connections between education and poverty established by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), a central policy tool for the articulation of the Post Washington Consensus. Second, it intends to study how the PRSPs have been consolidated and expanded through different international organisations. With these objectives, the paper includes four sections: the first and second sections present the ‘model of poverty’ and the ‘model of education’ defined in the PRSPs. The third analyses how different international actors have adopted the PRSPs as a guide to orient their strategies and policies in the field of education, development and poverty reduction. The fourth and final section critically explores the current global development agenda and identifies some of its main challenges in terms of conceptualisation and implementation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Well-being is realised through the interaction of the individual's desires and capacities, and external contexts. Contexts in postcolonial societies diverge from the assumptions of functioning liberal democratic states and capitalist economies often assumed in theories of schooling. Instead, these contexts are characterised by poverty and inequality, cultural diversity, and ongoing projects of state and nation-building. Through case studies of two rural communities in India and South Africa, this paper analyses the role of postcolonial contexts in shaping well-being opportunities through schooling in these contexts. It highlights the contested nature of this relationship in cultural, economic, and political spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces and uses Lakatos' idea of research programmes to summarise and critically evaluate academic discourse towards knowledge capital theory. The analysis uses rational reconstruction to formulate the components of the hardcore and protective belt of knowledge capital theory. By critically surveying the literature, it challenges the validity of the claims made by Erik Hanushek, Ludger Woessmann and the OECD that there is a causal link between cognitive development and economic growth. It concludes by stating that knowledge capital theory in its current form is degenerate and should be considered a high-risk research programme and that more sophisticated theories are required to be developed to explain current phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the relationship between human capital and income inequality, using an updated data set on human capital inequality and a novel database on earnings inequality. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between these two inequality indicators, but with significant differences across countries regarding the turning point. Skill-biased technological change is found to be an additional force that may blur the relationship between human capital and earnings inequality. Over and above the effect exerted through earnings inequality, the paper shows that human capital inequality has a direct positive effect on income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will analyze the Jesuit Pedro de Oñate's ideas on economic value and its relation with merchants' work. Born in Spain, Oñate moved to South America after studying in Valladolid and Salamanca, where he lived until his death. When dealing with economic value, Oñate's ideas were developed as an answer to what he and many members of the School of Salamanca thought that were Duns Scotus' ideas on economic value, but also to the economic and social situation that he had lived in America. There, the lack of merchants and goods resulted in higher prices than in Spain, which obliged him to analyze why this was happening and if these prices were just prices. In his work, Oñate combined a theoretical critique to the labour value theory, posing instead an original understanding of the idea of "utility", with a practical recognition of the importance of merchants and their work. Following this second idea, he argued that although costs are not the last foundation of economic value, they should not be completely ruled out if one wants to understand why there is abundance or lack of merchants, and if prices are just or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 30 years higher education has seen a rise in new managerialism across all its activity, driven by neoliberal economic policy. Professional doctorates (PDs) have been part of this rise, increasing in number considerably and spawning a related interest in researching doctoral work. However, there have been few studies focused on how students develop an understanding of theory/theorisation and how supervision supports it. This paper reports on a research project involving interviews with supervisors from professional doctorate in education programmes in the UK, as a particular example of PDs in general, to explore the process of theorisation. Drawing on Bernstein, it shows how supervision, and wider programme design, are mediated by the increasingly managerial context of doctoral study. The study raises questions about the ways in which students and supervisors engage with both methodology and theory/theorisation in working together and subsequent implications for the quality of doctoral work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores third-wave post-neoliberalism as an assemblage, fractured and dis/embodied, a mobile tool of governance articulated in various shapes across geopolitical sites. Post-neoliberalism is assembled alongside other key cultural shifts, such as post-truth, posthuman and the computational turn. In light of this Special Issue, this paper will argue that education reform is not only shaped by neoliberal drivers, such as marketisation, competition and decentralisation, but a central tenet of post-neoliberal reform is the presence of the intangible; 'big data' and data-fication, shaped by prominent globalised datasets such as OECD PISA, artificial intelligence, predictive software and complex algorithms. Measurement is far from new in the capitalist economy, but this economy seeks to measure the intangibles, that which does not necessarily exist in three-dimensional spaces. This is, as I will argue in this paper, the mark of capitalism without capital and the rise of the intangible economy in schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the determinants of the value of investment in higher education (absolute expected returns from higher education) among students of Russian universities, accounting for variations in the socio‐economic development of different Russian regions. Based on the longitudinal study, 'Trajectories in Education and Careers', it shows that the average salary in a region is positively related to the individual estimates of expected salaries after graduation. In general, the results correspond to human capital theory, and confirm the rationality of students' salary expectations. The expected salary shortly after graduation from university is positively related to the academic achievement demonstrated in the university entrance exam (the Unified State Exam, or USE), full‐time study and prior work experience. Male students expect to receive higher salaries compared to female students. Students who study for free expect lower salaries compared to those students who cover their tuition costs. Indirect influence (through USE results) of the characteristics of students' schools and of their parents' education on expected salary was found. In addition, we discovered a direct and indirect relationship between family income and expected salaries after university graduation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper analyses relationships between private supplementary tutoring and mainstream schooling in urban Maharashtra, India. The role of private tutoring progressively expands from the lower to the higher grades, and is especially visible in Classes 11 and 12 when it seems to supplant rather than supplement mainstream schooling. The paper notes the complex interplay of social, economic and educational factors in the shifting relationships, and has relevance not only for other parts of India but also other countries. The dynamics of private tutoring should be considered when conceptualising educational processes and devising policies for schooling, especially in relation to social inequalities and the efficiency of school systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systems thinking is one of the most difficult competencies for students to acquire. Nevertheless it is one of the key competencies of education for sustainable development. Although there is relatively little research available on the link between didactic approaches and sustainability competencies, it is clear that alternative ways of teaching, such as project based learning and multi-perspective and interdisciplinary thinking and working are more effective for acquiring this competency. In this paper we explore the power of art as a way to foster systems thinking and to distinguish between different ways of thinking about sustainability. We selected two paintings, Les Jours Gigantesques by René Magritte and Sky and Water II by Maurits Escher, to explain a top-down and bottom-up approach to sustainability. The paper discusses how business students respond to art in a course on corporate social responsibility and how it helps them to understand the meaning of systems thinking. The findings reveal that these paintings are relevant for improving the comprehension of concepts related to sustainability. Moreover, they add an extra dimension to the cognitive understanding of systems thinking, i.e. enriching the whole person, reinforcing critical and creative thinking skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education's potential to transform social and economic status and improve society, underlies increasing demands to improve access. But simply increasing access is not sufficient-it is important to ask whether our prevailing pedagogical approaches facilitate an effective and socially just higher education system. In other words, are traditional pedagogical approaches used in universities today truly accessible to the broader student population entering university? The current paper argues that the majority of pedagogies remain rooted in traditional approaches that favor those who benefit from continuous education from primary through to tertiary education. Such approaches rely heavily on incremental credentialism and are neither truly accessible nor socially just. Most introductory courses in universities require prior knowledge and "expect" students to be enculturated into a particular type of learning: as such, students with different levels of preparation, who come from different backgrounds, may be excluded from full participation. In addition, the rising costs of tuition fees and textbooks, and access to technology create inequities that reinforce socially-based discrimination higher education. The paper reports on the impact of implementing a specifically designed course, using closed-loop, reiterative problem-based learning, to create learning paradigms that focus on a more socially just approach for students entering university: these courses do not demand specific prior knowledge, foster difficult ways of thinking, and focus on developing research skills through access to library resources. Finally, the paper reports on students' expectations about higher education and underscores the importance of re-thinking at least the first-year experience for students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people’s transition from education into the labour market are diverse: sometimes direct from school to work or inactivity, sometimes characterised by stop-starts and combinations of different activities. This paper explores the association between transition pathways of Australian youth and their outcomes, in terms of earnings, perceptions of employment opportunities and debt. It builds on analysis by Fry and Boulton [2013.Prevalence of Transition Pathways in Australia. Canberra: Productivity Commission Staff Working Paper] who identified five pathways most typically taken by 15–24 year old Australians over a 10 year period, including quasi linear transitions from education to work with and without study, combinations of work and study, multiple churning between labour market statuses, and transitions into prolonged periods of inactivity. The present study adds four more years of panel data that have since become available, and compares the labour market outcomes of the different pathways at age 29–38. Earnings and employment perception converged over time, but debt did not. Socio-demographics were most strongly associated with outcomes, but earnings were also greater for churners and for young people in extended education increasingly combined with work. Transitions that combined learning and work seemingly strategically or ‘flexibly’ appeared most rewarding in the medium term, although neither compensated for socio-economic difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household resilience to food insecurity can be considered as the capacity that ensures stressors and shocks do not have long-lasting adverse development consequences; it is, nowadays, one of the key words in the policy debate on development. Measuring resilience capacity and how it varies over time is extremely significant for policy makers and people living in risk-prone environments. More specifically, there is a gap of empirical evidence about what drives changes in resilience capacity status (i.e. moving from a low resilience profile to a high one, and viceversa). This paper applies econometric techniques for estimating household resilience and adopts transition matrices to estimate how it changes over time. Finally, multinomial logit and bivariate probit models are estimated to identify the main drivers of change. Our study finds that female headed households are less likely to become the most resilient; also this paper demonstrates that education and participation to household enterprises are positively associated with increased resilience capacity. This paper innovates the resilience literature by providing an evidence based analysis of the main drivers of resilience; it brings this evidence in the Uganda’s context, focusing the attention of the policy makers on sub-sample of population which are worse off. More generally, our study suggests that resilience enhancing policies can bridge humanitarian and development interventions by demonstrating how long-term perspectives (i.e. those investing in education) can lead to an immediate increase of resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out of school children are a critical issue in education and development. Very little is known as to whether a disability is associated with a higher risk of being out of school for children in developing countries. This paper presents and analyzes the gap in enrolment in both primary and secondary education between children with and without disabilities using for the first time an internationally tested and comparable measure of functional difficulties (e.g. seeing, hearing, and walking). Using nationally representative datasets from 15 developing countries, this paper finds a consistent and statistically significant disability gap in both primary and secondary school attendance. The paper econometrically examines potential explanations for this disability gap using several specifications. A household fixed effect model shows that disability reduces the probability of school attendance by a median 30.9 percentage points, and that neither individual characteristics nor their socio-economic and unobserved household characteristics explain the disability gap. While general poverty reduction policies through for instance social transfers to the poor may improve school attendance in general, they seem unlikely to close the disability gap in schooling. The disability gap for primary–age children follows an inverted U-shape relationship with GNI per capita. This suggests that, as GNI per capita rises and more resources become available for improving access to education in middle-income countries, children without disabilities increasingly attend school, whereas the situation of children with disabilities may improve more slowly. Despite the adoption of an inclusive education agenda globally, this paper shows that more research and policy attention is needed to make schooling disability-inclusive in developing countries. More attention is also necessary regarding the functional difficulties experienced by children, as some may be preventable and the schooling inequalities associated with them may thus be avoidable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research points to several determinants of the private demand for higher education, which include individual, social, economic, and institutional variables. Of these variables, economic factors are considered to be highly relevant, especially in the current financial crisis. The paper investigates the link between expected rates of return to higher education and the intention of secondary education graduates to pursue university studies. The effect of additional variables influencing the choice of higher education (ability, gender, socioeconomic status [SES], type of secondary school, area of residence) is also examined. The findings show a significant link between the perceived rates of return and the intention of secondary school graduates to enter tertiary education. With the exception of residence, all independent variables are strong determinants of the intention to enter higher education. The paper also points to the considerable effect of the financial crisis on students’ expectations in that respondents reported lower perceived rates of return compared to previous estimates in the same country. The implications of the findings for higher education policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Green construction is gaining foothold among professionals, decision makers and the broader public. However, its success depends on a clear minded analysis of its pros and cons based on critical assessment, including cost-benefit analysis. This paper makes a first attempt at such an analysis of some of the first green sustainable schools in Israel. It deals with a limited sample available, as well as diverse rating systems which the different architects have chosen to comply with. By identifying and isolating the “green premium” of those schools which are comparable, and by analyzing actual direct benefits for the schools through energy and water bills (23% and 24% lower consumption respectively per year), the paper concludes that for the time being the payback period of green schools in Israel may prove counterproductive and prohibitive if calculated only on the basis of these two direct and immediate benefits. However, including in the analysis additional benefits, e.g. staff satisfaction (included in this paper), student achievements, user and broader public health issues and other public benefits (not included in this paper) can change the cost-benefit analysis outcome significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strengthening the municipalities as a fundamental instance and reducing the main disproportions that exist among them today requires the presence in each territory of qualified personnel to face such challenges. As of the 2016-2017 academic year, important modifications were introduced in the procedure for entering the modalities of courses for meetings and distance education at the university level. This paper analyzes the impact of these changes on the access of municipalities to that level of education. The results show that the transformations introduced favor the entrance, but there are still notable differences between territories. The 15 municipalities with the worst situation in terms of access to higher education in recent years and the effect on them of the changes mentioned are presented. The results obtained show that the greatest differences between territories can be seen in the admission to daytime courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University rankings have proliferated in recent years and have been diverse, with a variety of profiles. This paper deals with the task of obtaining one single summarized ranking based on a selection of the most widely known rankings, in short, a meta-ranking. Five of the best-known rankings were selected and a database compiled with the major world universities that appear in at least four of the five rankings chosen. A meta-ranking was constructed, which differentiates between two dimensions, identifying the positions of universities in each and checking bias. The positioning of the universities is shown and seven clusters of world universities are identified, differences examined according to size, quality of scientific production, level of internationalization, features of the economic context and institutional attributes (staff-to-student ratio and percentage of female students). These results are useful for benchmarking by universities and national university systems, with a view to planning decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the relationship between colonial education and economic growth are topics of growing interest, few studies have examined the influence colonial education on economic growth in South Africa. This paper uses archival data (derived from Bluebooks, De Zwart 2011, Statistical yearbook of the colony of Natal and Malherbe (1925)) from colonial South Africa over the 1859-1910 period to study the extent to which economic growth is influenced by education. The analysis applies fixed effect to account for unobserved colony-level heterogeneity and minimise the omitted variable bias. It also employs certain methods (such as Fixed effects two-stage least squares (FE-2SLS) procedure)) that account for a possible endogeneity bias caused by reverse causation between the dependent variable (growth) and our variable of interest (education). Our analysis yields two important results. First, the results suggest that levels of education (proxied by spending on education) have a robust positive impact on economic growth. The results are robust to addressing the potential reverse causality between education and economic growth and using alternative measures of education (proxied by enrolment rate). Secondly, the impact of education on economic growth appear to vary from one population group to another. Specifically, the effect of education on economic growth is found to be significantly higher for Europeans compared to natives groups, adding a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between education and growth in the South African context. The estimated coefficients of control variables such as natural resources present positive and significant estimates on economic growth, in line with many studies in developing countries which have found that discovery of natural resources favourably affects the rate of economic growth. Thus our results suggest that there is a need to think about how available resources could be used more efficiently to guarantee quality education for all and proposes that policy interventions in the historically disadvantaged schools and universities might have important implications to stimulate economic growth. This does not mean that historically advantaged schools must be ignored as biased educational policy that is not inclusive to all would lead to large educational gaps that can be persistent and destructive to the development of a country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of the microeconomy of a typical underdeveloped village in southwest China and the role of elementary education in the village economy. The paper begins with a brief review of relevant theories on the economics of education and the current social conditions and state of education in the village under study, and then tabulates and summarizes the income and living expenses of the villagers. The results of this analysis of income and expenses show an enormous gap, where a large proportion of the meager income earned by the villagers is “missing.” Further analysis explained the “missing” money: first, it was largely invested in compulsory and higher education; and second, an unusually high proportion of the villagers’ income was spent outside the village. These findings at least partially explain the impoverishment of the village under study (i.e., due to overinvestment in education, a skewed orientation toward external spending, and investment in education outside of the village). This structure of investment and spending siphons off the villagers’ disposable income, smothers economic activity in the village, and ultimately exacerbates the impoverishment of the village under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper substantiates the debate following Richard Florida's suggestion to measure regional human capital by creative occupations rather than education. Consistent with Florida's notion of creativity, it suggests a microfoundation that relates creativity to workers' cognitive and non-cognitive skills. It shows that this microfoundation is similar to that of human capital in recent labour economics, which has facilitated important new insights. While the regional measures of creative occupations developed by Florida or others are too crude to make a difference, occupations may help project workers' cognitive and non-cognitive skills from the micro to the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As market-led higher education systems become the 'new normal', a wider variety of organisational forms is likely to emerge. This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative and historical study that aimed to explore the meaning of collaborative governance in a unique and long-standing higher education joint venture in England. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior-level stakeholders from both participating institutions: architects of the joint venture, institutional leaders and faculty managers. Interviewees frequently referred to the metaphor of marriage and described the institutions as partners who don't live together but have responsibility for the children! The paper offers reflective insights on governance, leadership and management and highlights the tensions of balancing mutual interests, the use of metaphor to make sense of critical incidents and the role of micropolitics of enacting leadership at multiple levels. The paper contributes to conceptual understanding and knowledge of collaborative governance in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers and economists have expressed support for the use of incentives in educational settings. In this paper, rather than asking whether incentives work, we focus on a different question: For whom and under what conditions do incentives work? This question is particularly important because incentives’ promise relies on the idea that they might take the place of some cognitive failing or set of preferences that otherwise would have led students to make choices with large long-term benefits. In this paper, we explore whether that is the case. In the context of a summer reading program called Project READS, we test whether responsiveness to incentives is positively or negatively related to the student's baseline level of motivation to read. As a part of the program, elementary school students are mailed books weekly during the summer. We implemented this book-mailing program as a randomized experiment with three treatment arms. Students in the first treatment arm were mailed books as a part of the standard Project READS program. Students in the second treatment arm were mailed books as a part of Project READS, and were also offered an incentive to read the books they were mailed. Students in the third experimental group served as a control and were given books after posttesting occurred in the fall. We find that, if anything, more motivated readers are more responsive to incentives to read, suggesting that to the extent that incentives are effective, they may not effectively target the students whose behavior they are intended to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gentrification, or the class-based restructuring of cities, is a process that has accrued a considerable historical depth and a wide geographical compass. But despite the existence of what is otherwise an increasingly rich literature, little has been written about connections between schools and the middle class makeover of inner city districts. This paper addresses that lacuna. It does so in the specific context of the search by well-off middle class parents for places for their children in leading state schools in the inner city of Nanjing, one of China’s largest urban centres, and it examines a process that we call here jiaoyufication. Jiaoyufication involves the purchase of an apartment in the catchment zone of a leading elementary school at an inflated price. Gentrifying parents generally spend nine years (covering the period of elementary and junior middle schooling) in their apartment before selling it on to a new gentrifying family at a virtually guaranteed good price without even any need for refurbishment. Jiaoyufication is made possible as a result of the commodification of housing alongside the increasingly strict application of a catchment zone policy for school enrolment. We show in this paper how jiaoyufication has led to the displacement of an earlier generation of mainly working class residents. We argue that the result has been a shift from an education system based on hierarchy and connections to one based on territory and wealth, but at the same time a strangely atypical sclerosis in the physical structure of inner city neighbourhoods. We see this as a variant form of gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the current education reform agenda in Kazakhstan, which is underpinned, in part, by the argument that investment in human capital through elite institutions for gifted children can lift up the whole system of education. The paper revisits two broad theoretical perspectives, relating to human capital and to ideas about education for gifted and talented children in their role as important assets for economic prosperity. Drawing upon examples from primary data, this paper examines the multifaceted model of education for gifted children that is being developed in Kazakhstan, which seeks to combine an internationally recognised curriculum with elements from national educational traditions. It involves strategic partnership with major international educational providers focusing on professional development of teachers. The paper argues that elite education as a model for social change has both advantages and drawbacks. Furthermore, any change that is likely to make a long-term difference will take time to become embedded. The paper concludes by highlighting themes that would merit future research in Kazakhstan, and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates how individuals make educational choices in situations where some education sectors present the risk of ending up being overcrowded. We report on an entry-game experiment whose aim is the production of data controlled in order to test the cliometric model of glutting developed by Diebolt [2001. "La théorie de l'engorgement." Economie Appliquée 54 (4): 7–31], and especially the sensitivity of men and women to expected wages and to the risk as related to a limited number of positions on the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the joint impact of labour market risk and selection into employment on returns to education estimates. The risk-adjusted returns to both high school and college for males are larger than unadjusted returns. For females, risk leads to an increase in returns to high school but to a decrease in the returns to college while correcting for selection into employment has large effects for females. The results suggest that failure to account for risk and selection into employment when calculating returns to education leads to biased estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Cash transfers increase farm production by 33.5 percent. • None of these impacts are channelled through transfer-induced changes in farm labour. • In fact, cash transfers have no significant impact on family labour supply or on demand for hired labour. • This implies that the productive impacts of cash transfers flow through other channels, different from the labour one. Abstract This paper has the double aim to study whether unconditional cash transfers have an impact on farm production and to look into the causal mechanisms through which government transfers produce productive impacts. We use mediation analysis to identify the total effect of transfers on farm production and to isolate the influence of the labour channel from other transmission channels. In particular, we analyze whether changes in farm production are caused by transfer-induced changes in the use of farm labour – either by reallocating family labour between off- and on-farm work or by changes in the demand for hired labour – or if other transmission channels are at work. We find that cash transfers have a sizable impact on farm production but they do not lead to increased use of family or hired labour on the farm, which implies that the productive impacts of cash transfers flow through other channels, different from the labour one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unpredicted shocks such as weather, pests or price changes affect agricultural households negatively or positively. The shocks have two opposite effects (income and substitution) on parents’ investments in the human capital of their children, and it is not predictable from theory whether the income effect or the substitution effect of a shock has a greater impact on the investments. Therefore, it is unknown whether human capital investments (i.e. sending children to school rather than having them work) are procyclical or countercyclical. In this paper we show how hyperinflation may affect investments in the education of children by their parents using three data-sets from Zimbabwe. We find that human capital investments are countercyclical (the substitution effect dominates) in rural areas of Zimbabwe during a shock. Therefore, policymakers in Zimbabwe need to be worried about decreased schooling of children during positive shocks in the rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the intricate link between human capital and economic growth using panel data from 90 countries over the period 1970-2010 by employing a panel vector VAR approach under system GMM estimates. The paper visits the issues of feedback and composition effects which put a growing skepticism on the empirical studies evaluating the role of education on economic growth. The physical capital accumulation is also included into the analysis to deal with the omitted variable bias. The findings of the paper reveal that there are different linkages between human capital and economic growth for developing and OECD countries for the different stages of human capital formation. While secondary and tertiary education have predictive power for economic growth, economic growth does not predict human capital accumulation in the developing countries. In the OECD countries, the evidence indicates that tertiary education, which is the source of technological progress, promotes economic growth. On the other hand, results suggest that education spurs growth and in turn growth improves human capital formation in high income OECD economies. Findings are also supported by different lag orderings and different estimation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Effective evidence-based policy making in development requires rigorous measurement of costs as well as impacts. This paper discusses important challenges and relevant solutions for implementing cost-effectiveness analysis and comparing the relative cost-effectiveness of programs across settings in the context of education. Adapting development programs from one context to another requires many assumptions. Most of the discussion of those assumptions, to date, has focused on the context-specificity (or external validity) of impact estimates. This study examines the sensitivity of cost-effectiveness analysis to errors in impact estimates, as well as the sensitivity of costs to context, and explores how biases such as recall and pilot bias may lead to over- or under-estimates of cost-effectiveness. We use data on the cost-effectiveness of 27 student learning programs and 16 attendance-boosting programs across Africa and Asia to demonstrate the magnitude of these challenges, as well as potential solutions. We show that comparing Monte Carlo simulations of cost-effectiveness to certain benchmarks and adapting the largest cost elements to local prices (i.e., parameter variation analysis) can remove much of the uncertainty surrounding cost-effectiveness estimates, and we propose that biases can be minimized through the use of detailed templates for cost reporting at the time of program implementation. Thus, this paper not only provides evidence of previously neglected challenges for cost-effectiveness analysis, but – more importantly – provides practical recommendations for undertaking this crucial stage in development planning well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper looks at the existence, nature and form of intra- and inter-household externalities of education on productivity, efficiency and uncertainty of maize production in rural Malawi. Data from the Third Integrated Household Survey are used. I find statistically and economically significant positive intra- and inter-household externalities from education on all three elements, and that intra-household externality effects are larger than inter-household externality ones. Community-level schooling is found to substitute for household-level schooling in the sense that farmers who reside in households where members are not educated nevertheless have relatively higher production and lower production uncertainty, on account of living in communities where some inhabitants are educated. The paper also finds that the intra- and inter-household externality effects are more pronounced for the least efficient farmers, that they are monotonic and that they are largest when average household schooling is relatively low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effect of maternal education on child health and the channels in which education operates by exploiting a change in the compulsory schooling law (CSL) in Turkey. In order to account for the endogeneity of education, variation across cohorts induced by the timing of the CSL and variation across provinces by the intensity of additional classrooms constructed in the mother’s birth provinces is used as an instrumental variable. The results indicate that mother’s primary school completion improves infant health, as measured by very low birth weight, and child health, as measured by height-for-age and weight-for-age z -scores, even after controlling for many potential confounding factors. This paper also demonstrates that maternal education leads to earlier preventive care initiation, reduces smoking, reduces fertility, and increases age at first birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consolidation of the scientific publishing industry has been the topic of much debate within and outside the scientific community, especially in relation to major publishers’ high profit margins. However, the share of scientific output published in the journals of these major publishers, as well as its evolution over time and across various disciplines, has not yet been analyzed. This paper provides such analysis, based on 45 million documents indexed in the Web of Science over the period 1973-2013. It shows that in both natural and medical sciences (NMS) and social sciences and humanities (SSH), Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis increased their share of the published output, especially since the advent of the digital era (mid-1990s). Combined, the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013. Disciplines of the social sciences have the highest level of concentration (70% of papers from the top five publishers), while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers). NMS disciplines are in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies, such as the ACS in chemistry or APS in physics. The paper also examines the migration of journals between small and big publishing houses and explores the effect of publisher change on citation impact. It concludes with a discussion on the economics of scholarly publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the basis of an alternative theoretical approach to the study of the globalisation of ‘education’ – a Critical, Cultural Political Economy of Education (CCPEE) approach. Our purpose here is to bring this body of concepts – critical, cultural, political, economy – into our interrogation of globalising projects and processes within what we will refer to as the ‘education ensemble’ as the topic of enquiry, whose authoritative, allocative, ideational and feeling structures, properties and practices, emerge from and play into global economic, political and cultural processes In the first half of the paper we introduce and develop the concepts that will underpin our approach. In the second half of the paper we explore the explanatory potential and epistemic gain of a CCPEE approach by examining the different manifestations of the relationship between globalisation as a political, cultural and economic project and an education ensemble. We conclude by reflecting on the possibilities this perspective offers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Equity in education is socially desirable because of the relevance of education for the development of people. Therefore, it is interesting to study whether the allocation of spending on education takes into account this aspect. Since the concept of fairness is not univocal, it is necessary to define a position. Here, it is assumed that there is educational equity if equality exists in educational outcomes. Thus, the purpose of the paper is to examine whether the distribution of educational spending among the districts of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is equitable. The hypothesis that it is not, is proposed. The Gini coefficient and an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression are used to verify this hypothesis. It was found that the distribution of funds depends directly on the degree of illiteracy among districts, but also there is evidence that is independent of poverty, dropout rate, percentage of enrollment in the initial levels and the proportion of establishments classified as unfavorable. Then, it is concluded that the educational expenses distribution is not governed, or it is only done very weakly, by the principle of equity in the paper considered. That is, empirical evidence verifies the proposed hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A chart is presented which shops the paper submissions in the 2019 calendar year and a list of the reviewers who provided reports in the period of November 30, 2018 to December 17, 2019.

Given the contextual conditions in each country, the United States, Korea, and China all have their own unique history of special education, which leads to different special education and service systems for students with special needs. The purpose of this paper is to compare the development and current status of special education in all three countries. The researchers did a comprehensive literature review primarily using the database of Academic Search Complete, in addition to national journals, published governmental reports, and official documents from Korea and China. The results of this review provide a better understanding of special education and trends in special education across all three countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the relationship between teacher collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) and student achievement. Using a district-level dataset of California teacher CBAs that includes measures of overall and subarea contract strength linked to district-level panel data, we build on prior work by controlling for unobserved fixed and time-varying confounders. This study demonstrates that naïve pooled OLS estimates of student achievement on overall CBA strength are larger and more negative than lagged achievement and within-district estimates, signifying a negative bias in the naïve levels models. When controlling for time invariant and time-varying unobservables, the relationship between CBA strength and student achievement is persistently negative and small, or null, but never significantly positive. This relationship extends to specific CBA subareas and to subgroups of students. These findings have important implications for new reforms designed to weaken teacher collective bargaining rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effect of school closure in the Chilean market-oriented educational system. Between 2002 and 2011 the system exhibited a large turnover: 1282 schools closed -roughly one-tenth of the current stock- and 2350 new schools entered, mostly private-voucher schools. We use a large panel of administrative data, which contains individual students’ academic achievement and socio-demographic characteristics, to estimate some of the potential educational costs of this dynamics. We identify a causal effect of school closures on school dropouts and grade retention. School closure increases the probability of high-school dropout between 49 and 68% (1.8 and 2.5 percentage points). Also, school exit implies between 3.9 and 4.4 percentage points increase in the probability of grade retention in fifth grade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Textbooks are an important subject for the study of science in general and economics in particular. In this paper, we analyse at the process of the acceptance of human capital theory through its inclusion in economics textbooks by looking at two specialized fields to which this theory became highly influential: labour economics and the economics of education. The analysis will compare the patterns of the dissemination of these new theoretical developments in a more consolidated field and in an emergent field of economics research with a particular focus in the early stages of that dissemination process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Using a dataset for a panel of 118 countries, this paper shows that changes in the level of education of national populations aged 45 to 64 are positively associated with economic growth. An increase of one percentage point in the share of individuals in this age group who attended secondary education is associated with a 1.2% increase in GDP per capita. In contrast, variation in the level of education in younger cohorts is not positively associated with economic growth. These results suggest that investment in education benefits society, but only in the long‐term. Several possible explanations for this finding are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the theoretical analysis of different interpretations and interpretation backgrounds of the concept "functional literacy" represented in contemporary worldwide educational discourse. Within the study it was fixed that the researched phenomenon is widely addressed today due to the globalization agenda and a strong need for qualitatively prepared specialists ready to function in the highly competitive environment regardless of their professional sphere. Methodologically the research was supported by document analysis, interpretation, generalization and forecasting while terminological analysis and context approach were dominating at all research stages. It was proved that the term "functional literacy" is characterized by significant meaning scattering and has a potential for extensive development in the future providing sufficient uncertainty and making it rather hard to define its place in the terminological structure of modern educational context [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exists an enormous interest in clarification of the relationship between education and economic growth. Over the past 30 years, there have been conducted studies by economists about the connection between education and economic growth. There are actually many publications which provide strong evidence that suggests a correlation between the two. This paper attempts to build upon previous publications and to introduce a unique insight along with contemporary evidence about the relationship between education and economic growth in India from 1975 to 2016 by foc using on primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. The relationships are examined by utilization of econometric estimations with the Granger Causality Method and the Cointegration Method. These methods are used to create models that could shed light on the claim that education plays a central and significant role in economic growth of India which could consequently be used as an example for similar countries in Asia or around the world. The findings of this work show that there is compelling evidence proving a positive connection between education levels and economic growth in India which might influence governmental actions and shape the future of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]