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This paper studies the optimal design of a pension system together with publicly provided individualized financial education. Agents can invest in both a risky and a non-risky asset and can either under- or over-estimate the expected return of the risky asset. We show that, under perfect information on the misperception biases, it is optimal for the government to impose a uniform level of pension contributions equal to the optimal level of investment in the riskless asset and a U-shaped level of mandatory education. Under asymmetric information, we show that the level of education is always distorted upward for agents with important misperception biases (who either under- or over-estimate financial returns), but can be distorted upward or downward for agents with mild misperception biases. Whether we end up in one or the other situation depends on the size of the public and private costs of education as well as on the shape of the distribution of the misperception biases in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether parents' entry into unemployment affects investment in children's education through their decision to provide public or private education for their children. The empirical approach makes use of longitudinal data from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua–PNAD contínua) and propensity-score matching with difference-in-difference methods. According to estimates, parents' unemployment reduces the probability of children's enrollment in the private educational system, which usually has better quality but high costs, instead of in the public educational system, which is offered for free but typically has poor quality. Thus, evidence suggests that reductions in household income as a consequence of unemployment can have impacts on the quality of human capital accumulated by children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we contribute to the scant literature covering quantitative studies on the determinants of the non-academic staff incidence in higher education institutions by analysing how the proportion of non-academic staff is related to key features such as size, prestige, year of foundation and financial structure of universities. We apply nonlinear regression analysis to compare HEIs across Europe and the USA, taking into account time and cross-country heterogeneity of the two balanced panel datasets concerning European and American universities over a period of 6 years (2011–2016 for Europe and 2012–2017 for the USA). Evidence suggests that in both Europe and the USA, public and larger (if sufficiently large) as well as more research-oriented units are characterised by a higher proportion of non-academic staff. In Europe, we observe an inverted U-shaped effect of the share of non-personnel expenditure and the foundation year on the proportion of non-academic staff, while the proportion of non-academic staff decreases with the share of core and third-party funding. For the USA, we obtain similar findings except that the share of core funding and third-party funding is characterised by a U-shaped effect, and the impact of the share of non-personnel expenditure has no empirical effect on the proportion of non-academic staff. Additionally, we discover that some factors that contribute to the proportion of non-academic staff may constitute indicators of performance, suggesting the need for further research to extend our knowledge on the complex issue of the role played by non-academic staff in university performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier studies provide mixed results regarding the influence of incubator resources on a startup's chances of survival. This study suggests that this is because they tend not to take into consideration the attributes of the founders who actually make use of those resources. Based on 59 student startups operating in an academic incubator, this study finds that founding teams' prior experience moderates the positive relationship between an incubator's mentoring program and the startup's chances of survival through the first year. The results demonstrate that the survival chances of startups whose founding teams have high levels of managerial experience or low levels of entrepreneurial experience are low when they do not take advantage of the incubator's mentoring program. Drawing on learning theory, this study explains how different types of prior experience influence the relationship between the incubator's mentoring program and the startup's first year survival chances. The study's results expand our understanding of and contribute to resource-based view theory by considering the interactive influence of founding teams' human capital and incubators' resources on startups' chances of survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing mature-age access to education and training in a way that is responsive to changing labour market needs is a key policy challenge. In this paper we examine the impacts of a unique reform in the Australian state of Victoria that aimed to meet this challenge by introducing a broad-based voucher for those 25 and older. In effect, the reform uncapped public course-level funding and linked it to individual student choice instead of centralised funding allocations. Using national administrative enrolment data and difference-in-differences estimation, exploiting the continuation of existing centralised funding models in other states, we find that the voucher increased mature-age vocational education and training participation and improved the alignment of course enrolments with measures of prevailing skill needs, including enrolments of disadvantaged groups. Our study provides first evidence on the use of broad-based vouchers in vocational education and training to expand access to mature-age learning in a demand-responsive way. These results provide support for policies that put student choice at the centre of efforts to lift mature-age access to training, which is especially important for countries, such as the United States, that have traditionally funded vocational education and training through centralised allocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to investigate the level of agency costs faced by the universities in the UK, and how these costs impact the performance of these universities. A sample of 118 government-funded universities has been selected to collect financial data regarding various proxies of agency costs and quality of education. The research has utilised a multivariate regression model and t-tests to study the impact of agency costs on the quality of education in the UK universities. The results costs indicate that the UK universities suffer from extremely high level of agency costs however, the impact of these costs on the performance of these universities is contrary to their impacts on performance of the organisations in other sectors, that is, these costs positively contribute to the quality of education in these universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the propensity of African American students to graduate from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Using IPEDS data from 2004 to 2016, we take care in developing a control group of institutions from which to compare HBCU success. Results suggest that despite accepting more students who are at risk of not graduating, HBCUs have a higher graduation rate for African American students than their peers. We then show that gender nor major choice help explain this persistent difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since financial inclusion has become a policy target in many countries, properly measuring it is crucial. Usual indexes of financial inclusion include inappropriate variables and don't take into account other relevant aspects, thus misrepresenting the phenomenon. In this work we focus on the diffusion of electronic cards, generally not included in the usual indexes of financial inclusion notwithstanding they provide alternatives to usual saving practices and allow less costly transactions across larger markets and wider geographic areas. We show that, taking these instruments into account, the comparative valuation of the degree of financial inclusion between the main euro area countries changes substantially. We also employ survey data to analyze cross-country differences in the degree of financial inclusion and the distribution of multidimensional deprivations of specific sub-groups of populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of late, the problems of private external, or third-party funding of universities have been the subject of much debate, even at universities of economics and business. Given the constraints on government funding, politicians are looking increasingly to this source, with university leaders (rectors, deans, department heads) frequently being set targets for increasing income from it. Yet it is important to distinguish between different types of external funds. Moreover, their advantages and potential drawbacks must be weighed up. This paper seeks to do that, against the background of the author's more than 13 years as Rector of Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). Much of the paper thus draws rather less on theory than on that practical experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of public and private third-party funding of universities has changed over the last decades. However, the knowledge about how universities finance their research are rather limited. We aim to fill this gap and investigate the funding structure of universities and how third-party funding has changed over time. In our explorative analysis, we use publicly available data of four Austrian universities. We analyze this data at university level as well as the level of the faculty of business and economics. We provide insight into the development and structure of third-party funding and conclude that universities' funding structures differ and has developed over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European universities are experiencing increasing financial pressures. Given that governmental budgets are cut, they have to additionally rely on further sources of funding. Multi-party funding, however, is not easily managed and poses serious challenges on academic research. This study explores the question "What tensions result from multiple-party funding, what are possible consequences of the different funding strategies and—transferring the findings to the university context—how can universities establish and manage multiple-party funded research?" We conducted a qualitative single case study in a non-university research center (NRC). NRC has gone through the process of increasing financial pressure and now relies on multiple sources of financing that have to be managed concurrently. Our results discuss opportunities and threats and reveal core tensions related to multiple-party funding activities. Adopting a paradox lens allows us to transfer the insights from this case to the university context. We systematically discuss consequences for universities and academic research and suggest approaches of actively managing tensions via strategies of accepting, differentiating and integrating. We thereby contribute to the discussion how to establish and manage third-party funded research for European universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research partnerships between university researchers and industry partners are becoming increasingly prevalent. For university researchers, maintaining autonomy is crucial. We explore how researchers strategically manage autonomy in collaborative research partnerships, using a framework to distinguish strategically planned and opportunity-driven behaviour in the process of selecting partners and executing research in partnerships. We then focus on the management of autonomy in setting research directions and managing the research process. We draw on insights from 14 management scholars engaged in collaborative Ph.D. research projects. Based on our analysis, we show that researcher autonomy has two facets: operational and scientific. Researchers are willing to compromise their operational autonomy as a price for industry collaboration. They have a strong need for scientific autonomy when deciding on research direction and research execution. Although they need funding, entering a specific relationship with industry and accepting restrictions on their operational autonomy is a choice. We conclude that researchers' orientations towards practice and theory affects their choices in partnerships as well as modes of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on third party funding for academic institutions has demonstrated that it entails positive and negative outcomes. This manuscript deals with this idea from a reputational perspective, using the options theory as the framework for the analysis. The reasoning is based on the definition of a reputational income that is supposed to follow a stochastic behavior. It is modelled as a mean reverting type process, which is modified to introduce a correction factor with the aim of capturing the special reputational sensitivity of academic institutions regarding funding issues. We develop a stochastic partial differential equation, and we use its solution to deploy a sensitivity analysis to identify how the value of reputation reacts to changes in certain key variables. We find that the value of reputation increases if the academic institution becomes more sensitive to reputation related issues, or if there is an increase in the reputational reward that the market offers to a continued commitment to third-party funding. Also, the value of reputation gets higher as the ability to recover from reputational pitfalls strengths, but it decreases in a framework with high uncertainty and risk. So, this research proposes a mathematical formalization for the reputational dimension of third party funding in academic institutions, with the aim of identifying the critical variables that are likely to affect their reputational value and, thus, assist managers in their decision-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on contemporary and historical discourse around UK business schools and insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge, we argue that business schools should be understood and judged, not as they typically have been, as engines of knowledge production, but as engines of credibility production. Credibility, we argue, is central to the attractiveness of business schools to students and other key stakeholders and therefore credibility, and the mechanisms through which credibility are maintained, should be at the center of strategic thinking within business schools. We argue that over-reliance on funding from corporate sources can have profound consequences for the ability of schools to continue to produce credibility. This article focuses primarily on the experiences of business schools in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merit aid is an increasingly important component of college scholarships, but policymakers are concerned that merit aid is often given to students who would enroll anyway. As a baseline we use a regression discontinuity (RD) framework to test an institution-level merit aid program at a public research university and find that the merit aid program successfully increases the likelihood of enrollment. We then add to the RD a structure that accounts for the probability that specific students would enroll (or not enroll) with certainty. This richer model, which allows us to identify students who are less certain about enrolling, indicates the merit aid is much more effective in convincing such students to enroll. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some education policy studies suggest that consolidation of public school districts saves resources. However, endogeneity in cost models would result in incorrect estimates of the effects of consolidation. We use a new stochastic frontier methodology to examine district expenditures while handling endogeneity. Using the data from California, we find that the effects of student achievement and education market concentration on expenditure per pupil are substantially larger when endogeneity is handled. Our findings are robust to concerns such as instrumental variable adequacy and spatial interactions. Our consolidation simulations indicate that failure to address endogeneity can result in unrealistic expectations of savings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how tuition discounting affects the financial decisions of universities, their student recruitment, and reputation. Using a large panel data of U.S. private and public four-year institutions, we find that tuition discounting helps institutions enhance their short-term operating surplus, increase admission yield, and reduce drop-out rate. However, it does not appear to improve the graduation rate or the quality of the incoming students. Institutions relying more on tuition discounting have more financial leverage, less equity, and experience lower liquidity and asset turnover—indicating greater financial risk. These results are stronger for private universities. Finally, out-of-sample tests show that tuition discounting may not help enhance the reputation of private universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic theory establishes that pension privatization weakens the link between old and young and so reduces the incentive to invest in public education in an economy with lower return rate of capital than growth rate of wage. However, empirical studies of the link change are few. In this paper, we investigate the effects of pension privatization and the central government’s subsidy to individual accounts on public education spending in a three-period overlapping generation model. And then, we take contemporary pension reforms in a number of Chinese provinces as offering natural experiment conditions. Using a difference-in-difference framework and 282 municipal districts panel data over years 1998-2009, we test the pension-education theoretical link change. Both our theoretical and empirical results confirm that pension privatization is adversely associated with local public spending on education in China. Private pension subsidies, moreover, magnify this effect. Our study supports the theoretical assertion and selective empirical findings of a negative intergenerational effect of pension privatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing models of mixed public-private school systems usually capture only the decreasing average cost faced by public schools, whereas empirical studies find evidence of it for private schools as well. Motivated by this, an equilibrium model of a mixed public-private school system is studied in this paper, whereby private schools also face decreasing average cost over enrollment. In the model, households, heterogeneous with respect to exogenously specified income and child’s ability, choose among a public and a private school. Private school charges tuition whereas public school is free. Public school spending is financed by income tax revenue collected from all households and the tax rate is determined via majority voting. Achievement of a child depends on its ability and education spending. Under the assumptions on the parameters of the model, a joint lognormal distribution of income and ability, and a Cobb-Douglas utility, majority voting equilibrium is numerically shown to exist. The model is calibrated to match certain statistics from the 2013 Turkish data. Using the calibrated model, we compare the benchmark for a mixed public-private school system with a pure public school system to understand the impact of shutting down some of the private schools in Turkey following the July 15 coup attempt. We find that mean achievement and variance of achievement after high school is 0.039% higher and 0.013% lower respectively in a pure public school system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University-based entrepreneurial support organizations devote increasing efforts to create a context and opportunities for interaction among start-up firms. The basic assumption behind these efforts is that networks facilitate access to knowledge and resources and increase the chances of success for start-ups. However, the mechanisms that facilitate the creation of business ties with other members of the same community are yet to be identified and empirically tested. This paper leverages the social network and firm incubator literatures to hypothesize and test mechanisms that create the context and opportunity for business interaction among member firms within one university-based entrepreneurial support organization. The study uses the empirical setting of a large, university based support organization and the sample includes firms with different levels of membership-support. This empirical context allows us to compare different levels of membership-support and identify the dimensions that have greater impacts on a firm’s opportunity to establish ties with other members. The results reveal that geographical proximity, ad-hoc service support including shared space, and a larger community of member and graduate firms to which network ties may be formed increases the chance of connecting with other past or current member firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A motivated finance-major student should master at least one programming language. This is especially true for students from quantitative finance, business analytics, those attending a Master of Science in Finance or other financial engineering programs. Among the preferred languages, R holds one of the first places. This paper explains seven critical factors for designing and teaching a programming course: strong motivation, a good textbook, hands-on learning environment, being data intensive, a challenging term project, multiple supporting R datasets, and an easy way to upload such R datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study measures the efficiency of government secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia, using a two-stage semi-parametric production frontier approach to schooling. In contrast to previous research comparing school performance with two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA), we control for prior academic achievement of students by using a rich data set from 2008 to 2010. We employ detailed financial data for deriving the envelope for the efficient production frontier of the schools. Using Simar and Wilson's (J Econ 136:31-64, 2007, J Prod Anal 36:205-218, 2011a) double bootstrap procedure for two-stage DEA, the study finds that schools with lower total student numbers, a higher average of years of service of teachers, a higher ratio of special education students that attracts extra government funding, and girls only do better than other schools. On the other hand, a negative influence comes from a school's location in provincial and outer metropolitan areas. An important result is that the socio-economic background of students attending a school has no significant effect on their academic performance, whereas higher prior academic achievements have a positive and statistically significant impact on student achievement. These results are relevant to decision makers for the school sector, in particular for funding criteria contained in the Gonski (Review of funding for schooling - Final report (December). Canberra: Commonwealth Government of Australia, 2011) review report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As spaces in public schools are limited, a substantial number of migrant children living in Chinese cities but without local hukou are enrolled in private migrant schools. This paper studies the quality of migrant schools using data collected in Shanghai in 2010 and 2012. Although students in migrant schools perform considerably worse than their counterparts in public schools, the test score difference in mathematics has almost been halved between 2010 and 2012, due to increased financial subsidy from the government. We rule out alternative explanations for the convergence in test scores. We also conduct a falsification test and find no relative changes in the performance of migrant school students based on a follow-up survey of a new cohort of students in 2015 and 2016, a period with no changes in financial subsidies to migrant schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because tuition payment comprises a large proportion of expenses in households with children in universities, it causes large and clearly predictable changes in discretionary income in predetermined months. This study examines consumption smoothing for those households as an alternative test of the life-cycle/permanent income hypothesis, using the Japanese Family Income and Expenditure Survey. We show that a one yen decrease in discretionary income due to tuition payment is associated with 0.1-0.2 yen decrease in non-tuition spending in the month of tuition payment, showing that those households are not engaged in consumption smoothing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stochastic cost frontier with inefficiency effects is estimated to investigate the impacts of decreases in state funding support on the operating efficiency of public colleges and universities in the U.S. Panel data for 378 institutions spanning 10 academic years, 2004 through 2013, captures the efficiency effects of declines in state funding from 32 % to 23 %. There are several improvements over early work of like kind that was, however, confined to four academic years, 2005 through 2008, and could not account for the accelerated effects of state funding decreases that followed the financial crisis. Inefficiency effects are extended to include both private giving as a substitute revenue source and federally funded Pell Grants. Empirical results are robust and support the notion that government does matter. Decreases in state funding create inefficiency in producing public higher education. Results also suggest the same for private giving and Pell Grant support, although the former was statistically weak at best. On the cost side, the results, not surprisingly, indicate that university administrators held costs down with hiring increases in non-tenure track faculty and staff relative to tenure track and tenured faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italy's regions experienced different rates of human capital accumulation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although southern regions were very disadvantaged when the unification of the country took place in 1861, they caught up at a very slow pace-and a remarkable regional divide in education persisted until the interwar period. While previous hypotheses have focused on the role played by fiscal capacity, this paper sheds new light on the effect that enfranchisement had on the growth of schooling. The presence of large regional disparities in local electoral franchise is confirmed by the data; however, the relationship between voting rights, the intensity of local direct taxation and municipal fiscal capacity is weak at best. Furthermore, if the impact of these factors is analysed separately through a number of econometric models, fiscal capacity stands out as the most significant determinant of education across Italy's provinces. Against recent hypotheses, these results show that the different distribution of political voice within Italy's municipalities did not determine the persistence of regional inequalities in schooling in the long run: it was Italy's national education system, together with remarkable and pre-existent regional disparities, that slowed down the development of human capital in rural and southern regions, with immense costs in terms of future prospects for economic growth and human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the revolving door phenomenon erode bureaucratic integrity? To answer this question, we undertake a quantitative case study of a private university in South Korea that recruited a former vice minister of education as its president. Specifically, we investigate whether after employing this high-ranking former public official the university received favorable treatment from the education ministry in terms of funding. Estimates from difference-in-difference, triple difference, and synthetic control methods all suggest that the high-profile public official's recruitment is associated with financial benefits from the official's former employing agency; no such advantage, however, was observed for benefits from other agencies. This result offers suggestive but compelling evidence that the revolving door distorts the allocation of government resources; the financial benefits the university received are due not to the recruited official's greater competence, expertise, or knowledge but rather to his implicit collusion with the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predictive modelling is used to identify students at risk of failing their first-year courses and not returning to university in the second year. Our aim is twofold. Firstly, we want to understand the factors that lead to poor first-year experiences at university. Secondly, we want to develop simple, low-cost tools that would allow universities to identify and intervene on vulnerable students when they first arrive on campus. This is why we base our analysis on administrative data routinely collected as part of the enrollment process from a New Zealand university. We assess the 'target effectiveness' of our model from a number of perspectives. This approach is found to be substantially more predictive than a previously developed risk tool at this university. For example, observations from validation samples in the top decile of risk scores account for nearly 28 % of first-year course non-completions and 22 % of second-year student non-retentions at this university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The typical school district in the US consists of a central office overseeing primary, middle and high schools. The school district budget is allocated between the central administration and the constituent schools, who can spend these funds on personnel and non-personnel. We model this allocation problem as a network data envelopment analysis problem which solves for the technically efficient allocation of the budget within the district. The goal is to identify the allocation which yields the best aggregate performance for each school district in our sample. In our examination of 70 school districts in the Dallas, Texas area we find that test scores could be increased by approximately five normal curve equivalent (NCE) points by campuses reducing technical inefficiency and by an additional four NCE points by optimally reallocating the school district budget. Our illustrative model suggests that school districts could increase achievement test scores if more of their budgets were spent on campus personnel like teachers and less on non-personnel items like supplies, and if personnel resources were reallocated from the secondary to the elementary level. Furthermore, while the average school district in our sample allocates 21 % of their budget to the central office, our network model indicates that if resources were optimally allocated, the average school district would allocate only 16 % of their budget to the central office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents an overlapping-generations model with altruism towards children. We characterize a Markov-perfect political equilibrium of voting over two policy issues, public education for the young and social security for the old. The model potentially generates two types of political equilibria, one favoring public education and the other favoring social security. One equilibrium is selected by the government to maximize its objective. It is shown that (i) longevity affects equilibrium selection and relevant policy choices; and (ii) private education as an alternative to public education and a Markov-perfect political equilibrium can generate the two types of equilibria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to improve the understanding of political budget cycles by first identifying a previously undocumented cycle in tuition and required fees at public four-year institutions of higher education in the United States. I find that tuition and fees are 1.5 % lower during gubernatorial election years than in non-election years. No similar cycle is found in private tuition and fees. Using a newly constructed dataset, I then explore the variation in electoral competition in gubernatorial and state legislative elections within states over time to uncover the underlying electoral incentives creating the cycle. The results suggest that the tuition cycle is not designed to increase the reelection prospects of governors as standard theories would predict. I find that tuition decreases during gubernatorial election years as the reelection prospects of the incumbent governor increases. Instead, the evidence suggests that popular governors use lower tuition as political pork to expand party power in the state by capturing swing districts in concurrent state legislative elections. I find that the magnitude of the cycle increases with the level of competition in state house elections and that the effect is concentrated among those districts held by the opposition party, particularly if those opposition districts are populated with voters likely to be responsive to tuition as a policy lever. These results reveal important dynamics about party competition within states in the United States and suggest that the electoral incentives driving political budget cycles can be complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergenerational conflict may arise when the interests of different age groups do not align. We examine cross-country data to find evidence for this conflict in OECD countries. We derive our results from a FGLS estimation model, which is complemented by a System-GMM estimation to account for potential endogeneity. The data are from a panel of 22 OECD countries over the time period 1985-2005. We find little support for intergenerational conflict in general; however, those who are close to statutory retirement age dislike public expenditure on families and education because, once they retire, they will have less income compared to their work income. This effect is transitory, however, implying a change in voting behavior during retirement age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stochastic frontier analysis is used to estimate operating cost inefficiencies of public and private non-profit universities in the U.S. while also accounting for the possible effects arising from differences in the degree of government ownership. Using panel data for four academic years, 2005-2009, inefficiencies are estimated under two model specifications. Results indicate that public universities are more cost efficient when environmental factors influence cost frontiers but private universities are the cost efficient institutions when those factors are determinants of inefficiency. Increased government funding does matter and increases private sector inefficiency but offers some efficiency improvements among public universities. Following the global financial crisis, there is evidence indicating a considerable slowdown in the inefficiency growth among both public and private universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Old age pensions and public education account for a large share of public budgets. We link both programs through a tax-transfer system that is also sensitive to labor market distortions. We analyze the impact that alternative pension reforms have, through the political process, on publicly financed education. We explain how changes in the pension system design affect the link between the two programs and also labor market incentives. These effects, if they exist, act in opposite directions. Overall, we find that most proposals that entail a partial privatization of pensions reduce the willingness of the society to fund public education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine efficiency and its determinants in a set of higher education institutions (HEIs) from several European countries by means of non-parametric frontier techniques. Our analysis is based on a sample of 259 public HEIs from 7 European countries across the time period of 2001-2005. We conduct a two-stage DEA analysis (Simar and Wilson in J Economet 136:31-64, ), first evaluating DEA scores and then regressing them on potential covariates with the use of a bootstrapped truncated regression. Results indicate a considerable variability of efficiency scores within and between countries. Unit size (economies of scale), number and composition of faculties, sources of funding and gender staff composition are found to be among the crucial determinants of these units' performance. Specifically, we found evidence that a higher share of funds from external sources and a higher number of women among academic staff improve the efficiency of the institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Using correlation testing and principal component analysis, this paper studies the factors influencing the return on household education investment in China with data collected from questionnaires distributed all over China. Suggestions are provided for the methods to improve the return on household education investment effectively, from the perspective of both households and government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effect of increasing human-capital mobility-i.e. student and labor mobility-on net tax revenues when revenue-maximizing governments compete for human capital by means of income tax rates and amenities offered to students (positive expenditure) or rather tuition fees (negative expenditure). An increase in labor mobility implies neither an intensified tax competition nor an erosion of revenues. In fact, the equilibrium tax rate even increases in labor mobility. Amenities offered to students are non-monotonically related to labor mobility; overall, net revenues increase with labor mobility. An increase in student mobility, however, erodes revenues, mainly due to intensified tax competition. A concurrent cutback in expenditures mitigates this erosion but cannot fully prevent it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct a two-stage (DEA and regression) analysis of the efficiency of New Zealand secondary schools. Unlike previous applications of two-stage semi-parametric modelling of the school “production process”, we use Simar and Wilson’s double bootstrap procedure, which permits valid inference in the presence of unknown serial correlation in the efficiency scores. We are therefore able to draw robust conclusions about a system that has undergone extensive reforms with respect to ideas high on the educational agenda such as decentralised school management and parental choice. Most importantly, we find that school type affects school efficiency and so too does teacher quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational institutions in the Netherlands have some degree of economic independence. Their management decisions are not guided completely by a budget system, but in part also by a market mechanism. Still, budget management is crucial as survival is not primarily determined by the amount of equity capital, but by the annual funding received from the government. For the evaluation of capital management, a capitalization factor is introduced to measure the amount of capital employed by an educational institute in relation to its annual income. It can signal possible inefficiencies reflected in excessive capital assets. Actual budget and capital management is assessed with the help of four financial indicators. There appears to be scope for improvements in financial policies and some recommendations are offered on how to attain them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the influence of a Finance doctoral program’s academic content on the research productivity of the graduates at the time of the tenure decision. The results of this investigation show that a Finance program’s academic content has no influence on the total number of publications of program graduates, but finds a significant relationship between academic content and graduate’s records of publications in top finance journals by the time of the tenure evaluation. More precisely, doctoral programs requiring more mathematically oriented classes such as Continuous Time Finance and/or Stochastic Calculus produce graduates who have a better record of publication in top finance journals at the time of tenure than those graduating from programs without these requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the effect of inequality on school enrollment, preferred tax rate and expenditure per student in developing countries; when parents can choose between child labor, public schooling or private schooling. We present a model in which parents make schooling decisions for their children, weighing the utility benefit of having a child with formal public or private education versus the forgone income from child labor or household work. Parents vote over the preferred tax rate to finance freely provided public education. The utility benefit of an educated child is proportional to expenditure per student, so that there is congestion in public school. We find that when parents can send their children to work or to private school, high inequality leads to exit from public education at both ends of the income distribution. Thus high inequality reduces the support for public education, leading to a low tax rate and expenditure per student. Exit from public education results in both high child labor and a large fraction of students attending private school. In fact there is a threshold level of inequality above which there is no longer support for public education. In addition we explore the implications for the design of foreign aid. The results suggest that foreign aid policies should focus on promoting school attendance rather than increasing school resources, as the later policy might be offset by a reduction in the recipient country’s fiscal effort, with little impact on outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the economic impact of international students in Atlantic Canada. It says that international students offer a human capital source and support in the economic development. It cites the study on the role of international students as an economic driver in different provinces in the region including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. Moreover, their economic impact has driven 376 million dollars worth of return on invetment from 2009 to 2010 in the region.

The article presents information on a study which highlights the emergence of knowledge-based economies, migration patterns of international students, and the resulting birth of the phenomenon of brain circulation. The study presents a framework for analyzing the impact of international students on economic development.