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This paper examines the effect of the 2008 financial crisis on Taiwan's fertility by exploiting a natural experiment in which public‐sector workers are unaffected due to job security. The financial crisis reduces the number of children by increasing the first‐birth interval, which leads to a lower probability of first birth. Women aged 33–38 experienced the largest decline in the probability of first birth, increasing the risks of permanent childlessness. Low‐income households and those with less‐educated spouses have a greater increase in the first‐birth interval. The number of children and the probability of first birth remain significantly lower 9 years after 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from a four-year college in Taiwan to examine the effect of adopting a stricter dismissal policy on course selection, student effort, and grading practices. Under the new rule, students are dismissed if they fail 50 percent or more credits in "any" two semesters as opposed to two "consecutive" semesters. The results show students who had failed 50 percent or more credit hours in a semester are more likely to strategically enroll in leniently graded courses after the policy change, especially in classes with a low failure rate. Study time and class attendance increase significantly after the policy change, suggesting the policy has achieved its goal of encouraging student effort. Instructors are found to grade more leniently after the policy change and the effect remains strong after student effort is controlled for. More importantly, instructors lower grading standards mainly through failing fewer students, as opposed to giving higher grades.

This paper uses administrative data and a soft skill index integrating seven personality traits to examine the relationship between soft skills and academic outcomes. I exploit the timing of soft skill assessment and study the interaction between soft and cognitive skills in education production. The results show that soft skills are positively associated with academic outcomes. Soft and cognitive skills are both substitutes and complements in education production. The complementarity between both skills is asymmetric. Soft skills and returns to cognitive skills exhibit a U-shaped relationship, while returns to soft skills fail to show such a relationship with cognitive skills. Time-use data suggest that soft skills may have a causal effect on academic achievements, and increased study time is a mechanism through which soft skills affect these outcomes. Soft skills can reduce inequality in academic outcomes due to differences in cognitive ability. Investment in non-cognitive skills can be quite rewarding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan is one of the few countries in which bachelor degrees can be earned by attending either 4-year academic colleges or vocational colleges. This paper offers new evidence on whether returns to B.A. degrees are significantly different between academic and vocational 4-year colleges using the 1998-1999 Taiwanese College Graduate Survey. The multinomial logit model is applied to correct self-selection for employment status, and a wage equation is then estimated. The results suggest that the returns to 4-year academic colleges are 6% higher than those to 4-year vocational colleges. We also find a significant effect of college quality on wages. Moreover, public academic college graduates have the highest returns whereas those who attend private vocational colleges have the lowest returns.

ABSTRACT Using the difference-in-difference-in-differences method, we examine the effect of the National Health Insurance (NHI) on mortality, self-assessed health, and functional limitations of the elderly and seek to determine whether the effect is spread equally across health classes. We find that the NHI only has an effect on the death hazard, and it is the least healthy who benefit the most. The death hazard falls by 16-48% and 3-9% for the least health and the healthiest, respectively. The decline in the hazard ratio for the least healthy among the uninsured is 58% greater than that of their counterparts among the insured. Moreover, female participants benefit more from the NHI than male participants. We find no significant effect of the NHI in the SES-health gradient except for the education-death hazard gradient. The gap in the education-death hazard gradient between the insured and previously uninsured is significantly reduced by 7-31% after 1995. The hazard ratio among the less-educated in the treatment group also falls by 55% relative to that in the comparison group. The NHI appears to have prolonged lives but has failed to improve the functional limitations, which might have contributed to the rapid increase in the demand for long-term caregivers in recent years. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education subsidy in Taiwan is available for government employees only. In 1996, the government ceased to index the education subsidy for inflation, which created a natural experiment ideal for studying the effect of the education subsidy on fertility. Using the difference-in-differences approach, we find that the reform reduced the fertility probability for public-sector households by 17 per cent and this negative response appears to be permanent. The estimated probability elasticity of fertility is 0.05, which is smaller than that of personal tax exemption (0.8). The results also suggest that the education subsidy has a heterogeneous effect on fertility across income groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While countries around the globe have increased spending on health care, economists and policy makers have raised concerns over the productivity and efficiency of health care. This article applies a stochastic frontier approach to address this issue using data from 141 countries for the period 1993 to 1997. From the perspective of productivity change, our results suggest that gains in population health will be greater provided that more resources are allocated to investment in human capital. We also show that the scale component accounts for 65-70% of the productivity change. That is, omitting the scale component in our case will result in a significant underestimation of the decline in the productivity of world health production. We do not find evidence supporting the hypothesis that production frontiers differ between Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and non-OECD countries. However, the change in productivity and scale elasticity do vary significantly between these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, we examine the relationship between wives’ value of time and expenditures on food away from home (FAFH) in Taiwan between 1983 and 2000. An endogenous switching regression model is used to model the household's consumption decision on FAFH. The empirical results show that wives’ value of time, household income, presence of young children and grandparents, and wives’ educational attainment are important factors for both participation in consuming and amount spent on FAFH. The income elasticities of FAFH have increased from 0.09 to 0.17 over the sample period. Moreover, other things being equal, the level of spending on FAFH has also increased over time. The results suggest that there has been a structural change in the consumption pattern of FAFH by families in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]