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Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are a ubiquitous feature of higher education. However, scholars have presented numerous challenges to the accuracy, validity, reliability and objectivity of SETs as a measure of teaching effectiveness. Given the potential for bias, the use of SETs in professional review may constitute a form of institutional discrimination. Therefore, institutions of higher learning need to develop, adopt and refine better methods for collecting and using student feedback. This paper describes the steps taken by a mid-sized comprehensive university in the USA over a three-year period to do that. We describe the work of our committee dealing with this issue, how we collaborated with the rest of the university to enact change, and the Learning Environment Survey (LENS) system that the university eventually selected and modified. We also report findings from a pilot study of the new instrument, which was favorably received by both students and faculty, and make recommendations for other institutions of higher education.

Though the gap between female and male entrepreneurship has been narrowing globally, it is still evident with female rates lagging behind those of males. While existing literature has identified several obstacles to female entrepreneurship, the role of cultural traits has not yet been adequately explored. More importantly, lacking from the literature is a close investigation of female entrepreneurial choices using individual level data across countries. Employing World Values Survey data, an extensive longitudinal panel study of countries over time with over 300,000 individual level observations, we look at how cultural indicators impact female entrepreneurship. Using probit limited dependent variable models, we analyze specifically how cultural indicators impact female entrepreneurship, using measures of independence, obedience, and control over one's own life as our cultural indicators. In our analysis, we control for age, marital status, social class, town size, and level of education, as these factors have an effect on the decision to be self-employed. We also conducted robustness analysis using alternate cultural indicator variables to look for any change when compared to our benchmark findings. Our findings show that being a female lowers the probability of being self-employed. This supports the existing literature that shows a gap, albeit narrowing, between male and female entrepreneurship. Our main set of results also show that the cultural traits of independence and sense of control over one's life both help alleviate the negative impact of gender (being a female) on entrepreneurial choices. As a society, valuing obedience has the opposite impact - it magnifies the negative effect of being female on the probability of being self-employed. These findings were shown to be robust when we incorporated alternate cultural indicator variables. Our findings suggest that consideration should be given to cultural traits in the context of development outcomes. Because cultural traits can be difficult to change, our results suggest that as policy makers implement interventions to promote self-employment among females, they should be aware of the relevant cultural factors of the area and how these interact with female entrepreneurship. Policy can then be tailored to the cultural environment to maximize the intended effect on female entrepreneurship rates. JEL Classifications: L26; J16; Z10, O11 Keywords: Self-employment; female entrepreneurship; gender; cultural traits; WVS data Corresponding Author's Email Address: ndutta@uwlax.edu, INTRODUCTION Female entrepreneurship can positively impact employment, innovation and welfare, (Acs, Desai and Hessels, 2008; Baumol, 2002; Audretsch, Thurik, Verheul and Wennekers, 2002; Acs and Audretsch, 1988). While the gap [...]

Abstract Self-employment among immigrants is a key source for income and social assimilation with natives. Rate of self-employment is significantly higher for immigrants than for native-born individuals, and the causal [...]

Education affects individual values and beliefs, mitigates prejudices and enhances open-mindedness. Additionally, education has been shown to affect cultural traits like trust and respect in societies. Building on this literature and employing an extensive individual-level cross country data from World Value Survey (WVS), we explore the role of educational attainment and cultural traits in shaping attitudes towards abortion. Our results show that higher educational attainment is associated with stronger justification of abortion as a choice. We also show that cultural traits like trust and respect enhance the association between educational attainment and attitudes towards abortion. Obedience, however, erodes the impact of educational attainment on the individual justification for abortion. Our results are robust to a wide array of controls as well as estimates taking into bias arising out of simultaneous sample selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: According to the Government of India's Ministry of Labour and Employment Report (2015), almost 90% of the Indian workforce can still be categorized as informally employed, generating approximately 50% of the national product. Challenges with data availability have made a rigorous analysis of the informal economy in India often difficult and inadequate for policy formulations. This study aims to fill the gap by providing an empirical analysis of the informal economy in India using micro-data from the World Bank's Informal Enterprise Surveys. Design/methodology/approach: The authors contribute by empirically testing the association between the adoption of digital technology (payments) and firm performance proxied by firm sales. Matching models are used to mitigate sample selection bias arising out of simultaneous sample selection. Findings: The results suggest that the participation in digital platforms, namely, use of digital payment instruments, is associated with higher sales for firms. The results of this study also show that adoption of digital payments helps in both situations – whether a firm has been using digital technology or has just started using it since the outbreak. Research limitations/implications: More in-depth data over time, spanning across more cities of India, is needed to conduct a further detailed investigation. Social implications: The results should allow policymakers in India to reconsider youth-centric and women-centric business needs, even within the informal sector, which does not often enter the purview of the government but remains responsible for the growth and sustenance of 90% of the country's workforce. If further research on this issue could engage with the impact of demonetization of currency in 2016 as a lagged shock on sales and reestimate subsequent growth, it would perhaps offer a wider spectrum of how the performance of the informal economy in India affects the entire economy, which has over the last four years and before the onset of Covid reported slower growth. Originality/value: Productivity is measured in terms of sales of informal firms in India in a regular month or in recent period like last month. Adoption of technology such as making payments using digital platforms can enhance productivity of firms by lowering standard transaction costs and time spent for visiting banks or financial institutions. Albeit not extensively, the literature has investigated digital technology adoption in the context of firms achieving comparative advantage (D'Ippolito et al. 2019; Scuotto et al. 2017), firms generating value creation (Magistretti, Dell'Era and Petruzzelli, 2019), and in helping with strategic initiatives and agility of firms (Ghezzi and Cavallo, 2018; Piccoli and Ives, 2005). Nonetheless, it would incur certain fixed costs, including acquiring skills and awareness, to manage digital platforms. In addition, physical access to instruments such as smartphones or computers and internet connectivity are prerequisites for productivity enhancements. Firms belonging to the informal sector in India generally face these challenges but may also benefit significantly following successful adoption. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to conduct a preliminary empirical analysis of the impact of digital technology adoption on the performance of informal sector firms in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do firms with majority female ownership differ from firms with minority female ownership or male‐owned firms in terms of perceived constraints on accessing finance? Using World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data for Indian firms, our results show that there is no significant difference in male‐ and female‐owned firms in terms of their perceptions about accessing finance. Yet, this is true only for firms with minority female ownership (less than 50%). Firms with majority female ownership do perceive more constraints on accessing finance relative to firms with minority female ownership or zero female ownership. Based on demand‐ and supply‐side factors relating to business inexperience, weaker networking, and lender perceptions, as suggested by signalling and gender congruity theories, the results imply that majority‐female‐owned firms need to negotiate more for financing access, as they need to display positive signals for those investors who might possess stereotypical and gendered beliefs about the abilities of entrepreneurs. We also find that in relation to funding sources being one's own retained earnings or money from family and friends or advances from clients, majority‐female‐owned firms do not perceive financial barriers differently from male‐owned firms or firms with minority female ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Although literacy rates in India have improved for both men and women, less is known about the evolution of gender disparities across different levels of educational attainment. OBJECTIVE The goal is to determine whether gender gaps in schooling outcomes have narrowed, widened, or remained unchanged across birth cohorts. METHODS With a multinomial logit specification, we compare six education outcomes for people born to the 1956-1960, 1961-1965, ..., and 1986-1990 cohort groups. Our empirical tests indicate whether the gender gaps have narrowed, widened, or remained unchanged across the cohort groups. RESULTS We find evidence of narrowing gender gaps for some but not all education outcomes. The gender gaps narrow for not attending school, attending primary school, and primary school completion, but they persist for secondary school completion, attending college, and college completion. CONCLUSIONS Although we observe improvements in the gender gaps in schooling outcomes toward the lower end of the education spectrum, gender inequities associated with higher levels of schooling persist across cohort groups. It is important to understand the causes of these patterns, as there are likely important policy considerations for India as it grapples with the interactions among technological change, a relatively young workforce, and persistent gendered norms and attitudes. CONTRIBUTION The paper makes two noteworthy contributions. First, we show that gender progress in schooling outcomes is not uniform across different levels of educational attainment. Second, our cohort study framework provides a simple test for progress (or lack thereof) in education and other settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]