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This paper studies optimal taxation schemes for education in a search- matching model where the labor market is divided between a high-skill and a low-skill sector. Two public policy targets - maximizing the total employment level and optimizing the social surplus - are studied according to three different public taxation strategies. We calibrate our model using evidence from thirteen European countries, and compare our results with the target from the Europe 2020 Agenda for achievement in higher education. We show that, with current labor market char- acteristics, the target set by governments seems compatible with the social surplus maximization objective for some countries, while being too high for other countries. For all countries, maximizing employment would imply higher educational spending than that required for the social surplus to reach its maximum. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

A defining characteristic of charter schools is that they introduce a strong market element into public education. In this paper, we examine through the lens of a market model the evolution of the charter school sector in North Carolina between 1999 and 2012. We examine trends in the mix of students enrolled in charter schools, the racial imbalance of charter schools, patterns in student match quality by schools’ racial composition, and the distributions of test score performance gains compared to those in traditional public schools. In addition, we use student fixed effects models to examine plausibly causal measures of charter school effectiveness. Our findings indicate that charter schools in North Carolina are increasingly serving the interests of relatively able white students in racially imbalanced schools and that despite improvements in the charter school sector over time, charter schools are still no more effective on average than traditional public schools.

Many American states require that students lacking basic reading proficiency after third grade be retained and remediated. We exploit a discontinuity in retention probabilities under Florida's test-based promotion policy to study its effects on student outcomes through high school. We find large positive effects on achievement that fade out entirely when retained students are compared to their same-age peers, but remain substantial through grade 10 when compared to students in the same grade. Being retained in third grade due to missing the promotion standard increases students' grade point averages and leads them to take fewer remedial courses in high school but has no effect on their probability of graduating.

This paper characterizes an intergenerational welfare state with endogenous education and pension choice under general equilibrium-probabilistic voting. We show that politically implementing public education program always increases the future human capital, but this higher future human capital would not help support a more generous social security in the future. The effect of implementing PAYG social security on education however crucially depends on the sources of funding for education investment. Establishing PAYG pension program depresses investment in public education. However if the source of funding for education investment is private, in both the cases when pension is the only instrument or when public pension and public education are implemented together as a package, there can be an improvement in education investment if and only if the political influence of the old is limited and so the size of the PAYG social security is small. A substantially thick pension scheme which results from a heavy influence of the old in the political process spoils the mutual benefits.

Sistemas de school accountability que estabelecem a adoção de incentivos para professores e gestores geralmente impactam positivamente o desempenho dos alunos. No entanto, em muitas circunstâncias, sistemas de school accountability podem enfrentar restrições institucionais para estabelecer recompensas e sanções para os administradores. Nesse aspecto, o sistema brasileiro de school accountability é um exemplo interessante: a maioria das escolas públicas com primário são administradas por funcionários municipais e o governo federal não pode impor a adopção de incentivos ao nível local. Entretanto, devido ao fato de os prefeitos dos municípios brasileiros serem os principais responsáveis pela educação primária pública, evidencia-se nas eleições locais de 2008, apenas alguns meses após a publicação da segunda onda de uma nova avaliação das escolas públicas pelo governo federal, prefeitos tornaram-se eleitoralmente responsáveis por não melhorar a qualidade da escola. Os resultados mostram que, em média, um aumento de um ponto em um índice de escala 0-10 entre 2005 e 2007 aumentou cerca de 5 pontos percentuais a probabilidade de reeleição dos prefeitos. Este efeito é ainda maior em localidades com menor renda per capita e aquelas em que a fração de crianças em idade escolar é maior. Portanto, a responsabilização eleitoral pode desempenhar um papel complementar em sistemas de school accountability, algo que ainda não foi totalmente exploradi pelas literaturas de educação, economia política e ciência política.

MCom (Economics), North-West University, Mafikeng Campus Unemployment is a serious challenge throughout the world and a pervasive problem for developing nations. Besides other countries, South Africa has not escaped from the scourge of high unemployment. The unemployment rate in South Africa is complicated by extremely serious socio-political issues confronted by the South African government. As a result, this research investigates the determining factors which cause unemployment in South Africa and proposes a policy recommendation to alleviate unemployment in South Africa. The determinants of unemployment are analysed using Johansen cointegration analysis technique from an econometric perspective with annual time series data from 1986 to 2016. This study initially provides an overview of the South African unemployment and factors that cause high unemployment. Variables are chosen from empirical literature. The study identifies the potential factors such as population growth, government expenditure on education, foreign direct investment, and gross domestic product as the determinants of unemployment in South Africa. The data of this study is obtained from the South African Reserve Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. The Johansen cointegration test established that there is a long-run relationship between unemployment and chosen variables. In addition, the outcome of vector error correction model revealed that the speed of adjustment coefficient is 112.52 percent showing the variation in unemployment rate from its equilibrium level are corrected within a year. The value of adjustment is a relatively higher compared to those from previous studies on South Africa and high-speed of adjustment to long-run equilibrium. This implies that short-run shocks or disturbances in the unemployment rate would quickly move the economy towards the long-run equilibrium. Diagnostic and stability tests results show that the residuals behaved well. Impulse response outcomes were steady with the long-run dynamic model. The outcomes of the variance decomposition showed that most of the forecast error variance in unemployment rate is explained by government expenditure on education, whereas limited proportion of variation was explained by population growth and foreign direct investment in unemployment rate. The Granger causality test results shows that variables such government expenditure on education, and foreign direct investment provide unidirectional relationship and gross domestic product reinforce the inverse relationship suggested by economic theory. Therefore, in order to reduce and possibly eradicate the unemployment level, means to draw up and implement policies that will create an enabling environment for economic growth those are required. The results that have arisen from this study confirm the theoretical predictions and are also supported by previous researchers. Policy recommendations were made by utilizing these outcomes. One of the recommendation is that government should give education first priority. Masters

(english) During the last half-century, the evolution of educational attainment among Malaysians has been spectacular, and current enrollment rates suggest this progression will continue, albeit at a slower pace. Such a transformation of the educational attainment of labor should bring about macroeconomic effects such as wage compression, sectoral shifts and/or high skill un- employment, unless compensatory mechanisms exist. This article examines the impact of this evolution using a dynamic general equilibrium model applied to Malaysia. We argue that skill biased technological change occurred in Malaysia in recent years, and permitted unemployment figures to remain low and skill premia not to sink, despite the shift in skill structure. We run a retrospective simulation, looking at how unemployment and wages would have reacted had skill biased technological change not been prevalent. We also simulate the effects of a restriction in the supply of education to understand the impact of recent educational policy in Malaysia. The results are fed to a microdata set using a microaccounting technique, addressing distributional concerns. Our results show that the reduction in wage inequalities could have been substan- tially more important had skill biased technological change not been present. Furthermore, they suggest that the open-door higher education policy has contributed heavily to a reduction in wage inequalities. _________________________________ (français) Depuis plusieurs décennies, l’évolution des dotations éducationnelles des malaisiens a été spectaculaire, et les taux de scolarisation actuels indiquent que cette tendance va se poursuivre. Une telle transformation des dotations éducationnelles des travailleurs devraient engendrer des effets macroéconomiques tels qu’une compression des salaires, des glissements sectoriels et une hausse du chômage des qualifiés, en l’absence de mécanismes compensatoires. Cet article examine l’impact d’une telle évolution en utilisant un modèle d’équilibre général dynamique appliqué à la Malaisie. Nous affirmons qu’un progrès technique biaisé en faveur du travail qualifié a été présent en Malaisie dans la période récente, permettant des taux de chômage des qualifiés à rester bas et les rapports salariaux à ne pas baisser, malgré l’évolution de la structure des dotations. Nous faisons une simulation rétrospective, examinant les effets potentiels sur le chômage et les salaires en l’absence du biais du progrès technique. Nous simulons également une restriction de l’offre d’éducation pour comprendre l’impact de la politique de formation récente en Malaisie. Les résultats sont injectés dans une base de microdonnées utilisant une technique de microsimulation. Les résultats montrent que la réduction des inégalités salariales aurait pu être plus forte en l’absence du progrès technique biaisé. Ils suggèrent en outre que la politique éducative généreuse a fortement contribué à une réduction de ces inégalités.

Most OECD countries experience high unemployment rates and declining growth in higher educational attainment. An often suggested government policy is therefore to allocate resources towards formal schooling for adults. However, returns on such investments are uncertain and the foregone earnings are potentially large. We use Swedish population register data from 1982 to 2011 to estimate average long run earnings returns on higher education for 29- to 55-year-olds who enrolled 1992-1993. We find substantial positive estimates, but these only fully emerge after approximately ten years. Nevertheless, calculations indicate that the benefits for society exceed the costs also under fairly pessimistic assumptions.

This paper uses staggered bank branching deregulation across states in the United States to examine the impact of the resulting increase in the supply of credit on college enrollment from the 70s to early 90s. A significant advantage of our research design is that it produces estimates that are not confounded by wealth effects. We find that lifting branching restrictions raises college enrollment by about 2 percentage points (4%). Our results rule out alternative interpretations to the credit constraints channel. First, the effects are largest for low and middle income families, while insignificant for upper income families as well as bankrupt families who would have been unaffected by the increased access to private credit. Second, the effect of lifting branching restrictions subsided immediately following periods of increased loan limit through government student loan programs. We also show that household educational borrowing increased as a result of lifting branching restrictions. Our results provide novel evidence that credit constraints play an important role in determining household college enrollment decisions in the United States.

Focusing in particular on upper secondary education, this paper examines whether the relatively high level of expenditure on education in the Nordic countries is matched by high output from the educational sector, both in terms of student enrolment and indicators of output quality in the form of graduation/completion rates and expected earnings after completed education. We use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to compare (benchmark) the Nordic countries with a relevant group of rich OECD countries and calculate input efficiency scores for each country. We estimate a wide range of specifications in order to analyse different aspects of efficiency. In purely quantitative models (where inputs and outputs are expenditure and number of students at different levels of the educational system) and in models where graduation or completion rates are included as indicators of output quality, Finland is the most efficient Nordic country (often fully efficient), whereas Sweden and especially Norway and Denmark are clearly inefficient. However, using PISA test scores as indicators of student input quality in upper secondary education reduces the inefficiencies of these three countries. Also, when expected earnings after completed education are used as an indicator of output quality, all Nordic countries are estimated to be fully efficient (or nearly so).

Proficiency in the language spoken by the majority population may be crucial for the cognitive development of children from immigrant families. High-quality child care is believed to promote such language skills, and it is thus of concern that children from immigrant families are underrepresented in formal child care across OECD countries. How can we increase their participation, and can such participation improve family integration? We study an intervention in some districts of Oslo where children aged four and five were eligible for twenty hours of free childcare weekly. Taking advantage of the intervention being available in some city districts and not in others, we estimate the effect of the intervention on the enrollment of children and on their parents' employment and education, using outcomes measured for the same family before and after the child's age of eligibility. We find that the intervention increased the participation for children from immigrant families by 15 percent. However, we do not find support for effects on parental employment or education. The performance in tests at school entry (age six) for children from immigrant families in city districts with free child care is better than that of similar children in comparison districts. Overall, our results suggest that subsidizing center based child care can improve the cognitive development of children from immigrant families.

In this paper, I investigate whether increases in public education expenditures lead to reductions in private school enrollment. In order to deal with the endogeneity of public expenditures, I use as a natural experiment the 1998 FUNDEF reform in Brazil that caused exogenous variations in local public school funding. Using data from Brazilian School and Population censuses, I show that public education expenditures increases are associated with reductions in the share of private school enrollment for grade 1. However, the effect is smaller for grades 2 to 4, which is consistent with the existence of costs associated with switching schools. Resume Depenses pour l'instruction publique et inscriptions dans les ecoles privees. Dans ce memoire, on fait enquete pour etablir si des accroissements dans les depenses pour l'instruction publique menent a des reductions dans les inscriptions dans les ecoles privees. Conscient de l’endogeneite des depenses publiques, l’auteur utilise la reforme FUNDEF de 1998 au Brazil, qui a entraine des variations exogenes dans le financement des ecoles publiques locales. A partir des donnees des recensements bresiliens des ecoles et de la population, on montre que les accroissements de depenses pour l'instruction publique sont associes a des reductions dans la part des ecoles privees dans les inscriptions en premiere annee. Cependant l’effet est plus faible pour les inscriptions dans les annees (2 a 4) qui suivent – ce qui est coherent avec l’existence de couts associes aux changements d’ecole.

Despite improvements between 2001 and 2011, Canada’s Aboriginal population continues to underperform in the labour market. The Aboriginal educational attainment gap is often seen as the major source of these disparities. Using data from the 2011 National Household Survey, projections of Aboriginal population growth, and forecasts of aggregate economic conditions, we estimate the economic impact of closing the educational attainment gap by 2031. We find that the benefits of achieving such a feat could be very large, both for the Aboriginal population and for the country as a whole. Closing the education gap would raise Aboriginal employment by 90 thousand workers, GDP by $28.3 billion (2010 dollars) and Aboriginal employment income by $11,236 per worker in 2031. Labour productivity would increase by 0.03 percentage points per year over the 2011-2031 period. Assuming improvement occurs at a constant pace, we estimate that the cumulative gains to Canadian GDP would be as large as $261 billion (2010 dollars) over the 2011-2031 period.

Education is not financed solely by the taxpayer—many institutions and activities require payment of top-up fees, at the very least. This applies for instance to education and care services for children. A household’s private expenditure on education depends largely on the families’ available financial resources. However, to date, very little research has been conducted on the relationship between income and expenditure on education. The present study by DIW Berlin is based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study and the SOEP-related study, Families in Germany (Familien in Deutschland, FiD) for 2012. The present work analyzes private spending on various educational provisions such as child daycare services, private schools, or non-formal educational programs, i.e. sports clubs or music schools. The findings of the study indicate that, of the families who actually spend money on their children’s education, it is the low-income households that use a higher share of their household budget for this purpose—this applies both to overall education expenditure and to spending on individual educational services. However, if we consider all family households in Germany, higher-income families spend more on education, both in absolute and relative terms. Furthermore, it also holds true that the younger the children, the higher the share of the household’s income spent on education. More progressive fee scales could help reducing expenditure burdens of low-income families and support children to make full use of their educational potentials.

Bildung ist nicht ausschließlich steuerfinanziert - für viele Angebote sind mindestens Zuzahlungen aus eigener Tasche nötig, so auch bei Bildungs- und Betreuungsangeboten für Kinder. Die privaten Ausgaben von Haushalten für Bildungsangebote hängen maßgeblich von den Ressourcen des jeweiligen Familienhaushalts ab. Wie dieser Zusammenhang im Detail aussieht, ist bislang allerdings wenig erforscht. Die vorliegende Studie des DIW Berlin, die auf Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) und der Zusatzstichprobe Familien in Deutschland (FiD) für das Jahr 2012 basiert, analysiert die privaten Ausgaben für unterschiedliche Bildungsangebote wie Kindertageseinrichtungen, Privatschulen oder für non-formale Angebote, also Sportvereine oder Musikschulen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Familien, die tatsächlich Ausgaben für die Bildung ihrer Kinder tätigen, einen höheren Anteil ihres Haushaltseinkommens aufwenden, wenn sie sich im unteren Einkommensbereich befinden - dies gilt sowohl für die Gesamtausgaben als auch für die Ausgaben für einzelne Bildungsangebote. Betrachtet man hingegen alle Familienhaushalte in Deutschland, geben Familien mit höherem Einkommen absolut und auch relativ mehr für Bildung aus. Zudem gilt: Je jünger die Kinder, desto höher der Ausgabenanteil am Einkommen für Bildung. Sofern diese ungleiche Ausgabenbelastung abgemildert werden soll, um Bildungsungleichheiten zu reduzieren und Bildungspotentiale besser auszuschöpfen, ließe sich dies über progressivere Gebührenstaffelungen erreichen. Education is not financed solely by the taxpayer- many institutions and activities require payment of top-up fees, at the very least, this applies for instance to education and care services for children. A household's private expenditure on education depends largely on the families' available financial resources. However, to date, very little research has been conducted on the relationship between income and expenditure on education. The present study by DIW Berlin is based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study and the SOEP-related study, Families in Germany (Familien in Deutschland, FiD) for 2012. The present work analyzes private spending on various educational provisions such as child daycare services, private schools, or non-formal educational programs such as those organized by sports clubs or music schools. The findings of the study indicate that, of the families who actually spend money on their children's education, it is the low-income households that use a higher share of their household budget for this purpose- this applies both to overall expenditure and to spending on individual educational services. However, if we consider all family households in Germany, higher-income families spend more on education, both in absolute and relative terms. Furthermore, it also holds true that the younger the children, the higher the share of the household's income spent on education. More progressive fee scales could help reducing expenditure burdens of low-income family's education inequalities, and support children to make full use of their educational potentials.

Die ostdeutschen Hochschulen können die veränderten demographischen Rahmenbedingungen durch Wanderungsgewinne annähernd kompensieren – die Zahl der Studierenden bleibt, ebenso wie die Laufenden Ausgaben je Studierenden, etwa konstant. Gleichzeitig sinken jedoch die vom Land zugewiesenen Mittel. Die Bedeutung der Drittmitteleinnahmen an den Hochschulen steigt folglich an. Zu diesen Ergebnissen kommt das IFO INSTITUT, Niederlassung Dresden, in einer Auswertung monetärer und nichtmonetärer Kennzahlen für die ostdeutschen Hochschulen. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die Struktur und Entwicklung des Hochschulbereichs in Ostdeutschland. Dies geschieht vor dem Hintergrund veränderter demographischer und rechtlicher Rahmenbedingungen, welche die Aufgabenerfüllung im Bereich der Lehre und Forschung jedoch nicht einschränken dürfen.

This article analises the public expenditure in Romania, particularly the national priorities and the necessity of paying attention on the public finance resources for a better stimulation of the economic activities.

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) have been shown to increase human capital investments, but their standard features make them expensive. We use a large randomized experiment in Morocco to estimate an alternative government-run program, a “labeled cash transfer” (LCT): a small cash transfer made to fathers of school-aged children in poor rural communities, not conditional on school attendance but explicitly labeled as an education support program. We document large gains in school participation. Adding conditionality and targeting mothers made almost no difference in our context. The program increased parents’ belief that education was a worthwhile investment, a likely pathway for the results. (JEL H23, I24, 128, I38, J24, O15, O18) This paper evaluates the impact of a “labeled cash transfer” (LCT). The program we evaluate features small transfers, targeted to poor communities (with all households eligible in those communities), and paid out to fathers. The program is unconditional but retains an implicit endorsement of education through its school-based enrollment procedure. This program was designed and implemented on a (randomized) pilot basis by Morocco’s Ministry of Education. Within the same experiment, conducted over 600 communities, we compared it to three variants: (i) making the transfer explicitly conditional on regular attendance, (ii) making payments to mothers instead of fathers, and (iii) doing both at the same time.

In the last fifty years the importance and scope of the higher education institutions has changed drastically. Higher education institutions are faced with growing demands both in teaching and research activities. Moreover, higher education institutions have entered a wide range of financial and institutional reforms that mostly relate to the process of internalization, strengthening of institutional autonomy, increasing competitiveness and achieving financial sustainability. Quality implementation of mentioned reforms demands that managers use quality and comprehensive information, not just from external reports but also from internal management reports. In the context of the aforementioned issues, this paper explores the theoretical and practical importance of management reports in the decision-making process in the higher education system. Authors have examined the usage of management reports within higher education institutions in Croatia through empirical research that was conducted in the year 2014. The questionnaire was sent to all HEIs in the Republic of Croatia, more precisely to the Deans of HEIs. Appropriate statistical methods, including descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and regression analysis, were used for processing and interpreting primary data. Moreover, the obtained results were also compared with the results of similar previous research. The authors have confirmed the main hypothesis that management reports are not sufficiently used in the decision-making process at Croatian higher education institutions.

We use an RCT to analyze the impacts of microcredit. The study population consists of loan applicants who were marginally rejected by an MFI in Bosnia. A random subset of these were offered a loan. We provide evidence of higher self-employment, increases in inventory, a reduction in the incidence of wage work and an increase in the labor supply of 16–19-year-olds in the household's business. We also present some evidence of increases in profits and a reduction in consumption and savings. There is no evidence that the program increased overall household income. (JEL C93, G21, I38, J23, L25, P34, P36)

This paper examines the effect of the One Laptop Per Child program in Uruguay [Plan Ceibal] on household labor income. Since 2007, the Uruguayan government has delivered one laptop to every child and every teacher in public primary schools. This program has considerably increased access to information technology within households since evidence shows that parents make use of the technology. Households in the department of Florida received laptops in 2007, while those in the department of Canelones received them in 2009. Therefore, using data from Household Surveys from the National Institute of Statistics in Uruguay, a difference-in-difference model is estimated to capture the effect of the plan of giving laptops on labor income [either total or hourly income]. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant positive effect of this plan on the labor income of those households below the median income. Such findings call for a plan that is more targeted to give laptops to low-income households, where parents possess less computer skills and the program has a greater potential.

This paper provides new estimates of the medium and long-term impacts of Head Start on the health and behavioral problems of its participants. We identify these impacts using discontinuities in the probability of participation induced by program eligibility rules. Our strategy allows us to identify the effect of Head Start for the set of individuals in the neighborhoods of multiple discontinuities, which vary with family size, state and year (as opposed to a smaller set of individuals neighboring a single discontinuity). Participation in the program reduces the incidence of behavioral problems, serious health problems and obesity of male children at ages 12 and 13. It also lowers depression and obesity among adolescents, and reduces engagement in criminal activities for young adults.

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 gen- erate the two types of equilibria.

This article continues on a number of previous studies by other scientists in investigating secondary education efficiency by applying a non-parametric methodology. In this respect, the purpose of the article is to review some previous studies on measuring the efficiency of public (secondary) education sector as well as some conceptual and methodological issues of a non-parametric approach. Most importantly, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique is presented and then applied to a wide range of EU and OECD countries, including Slovenia and Croatia, to evaluate the technical efficiency of secondary education. The empirical results show that technical efficiency in secondary education varies significantly across the great majority of EU and OECD countries. Both Slovenia and Croatia show a relatively high level of technical inefficiency in their secondary education as they respectively only rank in the third and fourth quartiles among selected countries. Therefore, rationalising public secondary education spending is strongly recommended with possible redirecting of some excessive resources to the tertiary education sector. First published online:11 Aug 2014

We conduct the first nationwide study of incentives under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which requires states to punish schools failing to meet target passing rates on students' standardized exams. States' idiosyncratic policies created variation in the risk of failure among very similar schools in different states, which we use to identify effects of accountability pressure. We find NCLB lowers teachers' perceptions of job security, shifts time towards specialist teachers in high-stakes subjects and away from whole-class instruction, and has positive or neutral effects on students' enjoyment of learning and achievement in reading, math, and science. (JEL H52, H75, I21, I28, J45)

This study evaluates the effect of four randomized interventions aimed at strengthening school committees, and subsequently improving learning outcomes, in public primary schools in Indonesia. All study schools were randomly allocated to either a control group receiving no intervention, or to treatment groups receiving a grant plus one or a combination of three interventions: training for school committee members, a democratic election of school committee members, or facilitated collaboration between the school committee and the village council, also called linkage. Nearly two years after implementation, the study finds that measures to reinforce existing school committee structures, the grant and training interventions, demonstrate limited or no effects; while measures that foster outside ties between the school committee and other parties, linkage and election, lead to greater engagement by education stakeholders and in turn to learning. Test scores improve in Indonesian by 0.17 standard deviations for linkage and 0.22 standard deviations for linkage+election. The election intervention alone leads to changes in time household members accompany children studying per week, but this does not lead to learning. Linkage is the most cost effective intervention, causing a 0.13 change in standard deviation in Indonesian test scores for each 100 dollars (US) spent.

This article demonstrates the idiosyncrasies of the Hungarian public educational system (primary, secondary and adult education) through regional and global comparisons. The main sources for comparison are data from the OECD and Eurostat as well as empirical research in Hungary. The research focused on educational attainment and the structure of the educational system, inequalities within the Hungarian educational system, educational attainment and employment, teacher salaries and teacher selection policy issues. The article proved that Hungary’s public education system is the most unequal among the OECD countries, the structures of the secondary programs are biased, employment is relatively low, the rate of adult education is among the lowest, and the quality of teachers is below average because of counter-selection processes. Most of these problems can be traced to the lack of resources and the processes generated by demographic and social changes that have not been followed by adequate policy changes. The study deals with the educational disadvantages for Roma children as well. While this phenomenon affects Europe as a whole, it affects Hungary to a much greater extent.

Many countries have implemented childcare subsidies in an effort to help families; in the United States, the government created the Child Care and Development Fund in 1996, which provides public funds for childcare assistance to low-income families. Despite the importance of the issue, little is known about the effect of childcare subsidies on parent and child outcomes. Research in this area has been limited because of the difficulty identifying the causal effect of childcare price on later outcomes; for example, higher childcare prices may be associated with better childcare or wealthier parents, in which case one cannot isolate the effect of price alone on later child outcomes. This paper uses recent data and a novel source of identifying variation--sharp discontinuities in the price of childcare by income in Norway--to identify the effect of childcare subsidies on parental behavior and the later academic achievement of children. There are a number of papers that have examined the effect of childcare subsidies on female labor force participation, with the findings ranging from no effect to significant negative effects (See Blau, 2000, for a summary). More recently, work by Herbst and Tekin (2010b) has examined the effect of childcare subsidies in the United States on children’s academic performance.1 They use a unique identification strategy, applying distance to the nearest social service agency that administers the subsidy application process as an instrument for subsidy receipt. They find small negative effects of subsidy receipt the year before kindergarten on kindergarten performance, although these negative effects have generally disappeared by third grade.2 Our work complements this

The author discusses the “Nota sull’attuale congiuntura economica in Italia e sulle politiche per fronteggiarla”, a document prepared by the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in sight of its access to government. The Italian economy risks entering a prolonged crisis unless a number of reforms are undertaken, aimed at boosting innovation, reforming the public administration, investing in education.

‘Human Capital Theory’ shows that education is a vital part of improving productivity. This paper investigates effects of tertiary education (post-school education: at universities, higher-education colleges, and similar institutions) on how productive an employee is. A problem with such research is to identify which variable is the cause, and which is the effect. This paper uses time-series regression analysis of World Bank data, on the fraction of a country’s workforce with tertiary education, and productivity. This paper also uses Britain as a case study: the British Household Panel Study shows what happens to a graduate in the years after they leave university. The delayed effects of education on output makes clear that education is a cause (rather than an effect) of improvements in productivity. In conclusion, university-level education is beneficial to economic growth.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of education and economic growth, investment in education to increase human development and economic growth, and the role of education in promoting economic well-being. We are specifically interested in how previous research investigated the robustness of the relationship between education and economic outcomes, the association between the returns to college and the decision to attend college, human capital as an engine of economic growth for technological change, and the economic impact of schools.

The mainstay of the paper is formed by an analysis of the role of cognitive skills in the process of economic development, growing educational wage gaps, and markets for academic research. This paper seeks to fill a gap in the current literature by examining cognitive skills as a direct measure of human capital, the impact of cognitive skills on individual earnings, and the implications of policies designed to improve educational outcomes.

Against the background of economic globalization, governments tend to take tax measures disadvantageous to society in order to increase the attractiveness of the business environment. A common measures for this purpose is the reduction in tax rate. According to the classical theory of tax competition such measure leads to under the provision of public goods. This article aims to show, through an econometric analysis, whether in Romania, in the period 2006-2013, reducing total tax rate had a negative impact on public services. For this, using linear regression technique, the article analysed the correlation between total tax rate and the variation in the share of the main public service spending in GDP.

The most desirable Kenyan secondary schools are elite government schools that admit the best students from across the country. We exploit the random variation generated by the centralized school admissions process in a regression discontinuity design to obtain causal estimates of the effects of attending one of these elite public schools on student progression and test scores in secondary school. Despite their reputations, we find little evidence of positive impacts on learning outcomes for students who attended these schools, suggesting that their sterling reputations reflect the selection of students rather than their ability to generate value-added test score gains. (JEL H52, I21, I28, O15) E lite, prestigious, and highly selective government secondary schools are common in education systems throughout the world. These schools admit a relatively small number of high achieving students each year, cost significantly more than other public school options, and are coveted by both students and their par ents in part due to their students’ superior performance on nationwide assessments. Their alumni are luminaries in business, politics, and civil service and have a disproportionate influence on the economic progress of their countries as a result of their careers in the upper echelons of government and business. 1 While such schools are perceived to be academically superior, whether their reputations simply reflect selective admissions or value-added learning is unclear. Additionally, elite schools could focus resources and target the level of instruction toward a certain type of

Education is the most important pillar in the development of a society, because it forms the attitude of the members of society, their training and their ability to adapt effectively to the changes imposed by society. Studies on education show that those economies that have invested in education over the years have obtained the best results in the field of social and economic development. Therefore the EU 2020 strategy aims to create a knowledge-based society, where education is a central pillar. Among the indicators followed as strategic target to be achieved by 2020 there are early school leavers, which should be less than 10% and tertiary educational attainment, which must be at least 40% for the age group 30-34 years. Our paper analyses Romania's position in relation to the other European countries in terms of education and measures taken to improve education strategy with regard to meeting the Europe 2020 targets. Strengths and weaknesses of the Romanian education system are captured, especially in terms of higher education.

Are teachers’impacts on students’test scores (“value-added”) a good measure of their quality? One reason this question has sparked debate is disagreement about whether value-added (VA) measures provide unbiased estimates of teachers’causal impacts on student achievement. We test for bias in VA using previously unobserved parent characteristics and a quasi-experimental design based on changes in teaching sta¤. Using school district and tax records for more than one million children, we …nd that VA models which control for a student’s prior test scores exhibit little bias in forecasting teachers’impacts on student achievement. Although teachers have substantial impacts

Aux États-Unis, l’encours de la dette détenue par les étudiants a fortement progressé depuis 2008. Parallèlement, un contexte économique moins favorable pour les jeunes diplômés a entraîné une hausse des défauts sur les prêts étudiants. Les répercussions sur l’économie américaine sont déjà discernables, néanmoins les risques financiers devraient rester circonscrits.

The balance of outstanding student loan debt has risen sharply in the United States since 2008. At the same time, economic prospects for young graduates have worsened, leading to an increase in defaults on student loans. The trend is already having visible repercussions on the US economy; however, the financial risks associated with student debt should remain limited.

Numerous studies have examined the enrollment responses of traditional undergraduate students to the introduction of government-provided tuition subsidies, but far less attention has been devoted to the elasticity of demand for graduate education. This paper examines how the tax code and government education policies affect graduate enrollment and persistence rates along with the ways in which students fund their graduate education. Our empirical methodology is based on exogenous variations in the availability of an income tax exemption for employer- provided tuition assistance for graduate courses. We find that graduate attendance among full-time workers age 24-30 is higher when the tax exemption is available, mostly due to higher persistence in public universities and vocational course work. The use of employer aid for individuals enrolled in full-time and public part-time graduate programs also increases. We present some evidence that universities may adjust tuition to capture part of the incidence.

We investigate the relative merits of unconditional cash transfers (UCT), conditional cash transfers (CCT), and improvements in education quality on efficiency and welfare. In our setting some parents under-invest in their children's education because capital market imperfections prevent them from borrowing. When credit constrained households can be perfectly targeted by the government, we show that CCT are more effective than UCT in enhancing efficiency and equivalent in terms of welfare. When public education quality is very low, raising quality is welfare improving, but is never efficiency enhancing. If the government cannot target constrained households, UCT may be the best policy both in terms of efficiency and welfare.

This paper contributes to the existing literature on the effect of legal status on educational access among immigrant youth in the United States. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 granted amnesty to undocumented immigrants who entered the United States before 1982. Using a difference-indifferences framework, I analyze the effect of this large amnesty program on immigrant youth's postsecondary educational access. My main finding shows that immigrant youths who were granted amnesty under IRCA are more likely to enroll in postsecondary education.

Education is one of the main resources of a country. Germany is one of the countries that have put a strong emphasis on developing and improving the quality of education, and this was important in the development of its economy over time. In Germany, education is mainly the responsibility of the States (Lands) in the Federal Republic (sixteen lands). Each of them has their own laws, so that each University is different. Although the university education system in this country is characterized by a strongly decentralized system, at the same time it is one of the most competitive systems worldwide.

Recent criticism from different sides has expressed the view that, with scarce resources, there is little justification for massive public funding of higher education. Central to the debate is the conjecture that colleges and universities use their resources inefficiently and focus insufficiently on their mission to expand students' human potential. Our aim in this paper is to examine the theoretical premises of this conjecture in a small open economy and uncover the conditions under which public investment in higher education is efficient and desirable. We analyze non-stationary equilibria of an OLG economy, characterized by perfect capital mobility, intergenerational transfers and a hierarchical education system. The government uses income tax revenues to finance basic education and support higher education that generates skilled labor. Given this, the following issues are considered: (a) the impact of education and international markets on the equilibrium number of low-skilled and skilled workers in each generation; (b) the economic efficiency of public subsidies to higher education in generating skilled human capital; (c) the endogenous support for a government's educational policies found in a political equilibrium.

The education of the People’s Republic of China is in constant growth, development and change. Characterized by its size, throughout the country there are over 2,000 universities and colleges that sum up over 6 million graduates every year. Having originally supported ideas and principles of Confucianism universities impose an organized, focused towards performance, but at the same time aimed at providing equal opportunities for people wishing to attend the courses of higher education institutes. Directly influenced by developments in global education, the Chinese University system has to adapt and evolve to meet the requirements and the needs of market economy and hence to be able to directly compete with the major universities of the world.

The paper discusses the role and importance of local self-governments in financing adult education system, from the perspective of informal education. Starting from deliberation of the new European education strategy, and taking a stand that education and skill development represent the foundation for 21st century society development, as well as the necessity of stimulating open and flexible learning, by organizing various forms of informal adult education, one perceives the importance of local self-governments in realizing the objectives of life-long education and professional development. Contemporary understanding of informal education starts from the viewpoint that it is a part of the modern education concept, and that it is a necessary part of the formal education, regardless whether it serves as a “second chance for gaining education” or as a complement to the formal education based on personal or society requirements. From these stems the whole complexity of organizing and fi nancing such way of education. The peculiarity of informal education is reflected on the fact that it pervades various requirements and parts of society, therefore the sole fi nancial planning, in the part for which the state has been lawfully obligated, is uneven when compared to formal education, which is regulated and even at the state-level. Th e paper considers this problem within the perspective of the 2013 City of Novi Sad (Serbia) budget, in which the informal education at various budgetary positions (education, culture, environment protection, social welfare, etc.) participates with 2.637 % of the entire budget. The unevenness in financing is not refl ected on the various positions of a single budget, but also on the development level of local self-governments. The question this paper submits is how to organize management of such system, in order to function as optimally as possible, i.e. how to emphasize the requirements for establishing systemic mechanisms which would ensure the minimum of financing of this highly important part of educational system.

At the moment academic education is imperative for any society based on knowledge or which tends to it. Academic education can be treated as the "engine" of the society development as it contributes to the individual development of citizens and the development of the community as a whole. Therefore, the amounts for academic education should not be treated as burdensome expenses, but as true long-term investments for the community development. However, the Romanian academic education funding has always been a sore spot and a highly controversial topic of debate for members of the political class and civil society. For a long time it has been searching for the optimal solutions in university funding as an essential lever for shaping and sustaining a high quality education system. Over time, academic education has been funded from multiple sources: not only from public funds and financial resources from individuals or companies, but also from its own resources. Although efforts have always been made to sustain academic education from public funds, the recent research in higher education funding reveals a decrease of the amounts allocated by the state. The economic and financial crisis has clearly made its mark even on public funding of state universities. In this pessimistic context, in order to carry out their missions, universities have been forced to find new sources of funding. In this paper we propose, by a persuasive presentation from a theoretical perspective, to illustrate key aspects of current funding of academic education in Romania. In this purpose we will analyze the funding mechanism for state universities and private universities and we will try to provide answers for the following questions: To what extent could the current system of financing academic education in Romania be improved and what can we do to improve it? Could new sources of funding be identified as to support the educational process?

la literatura empírica que analiza la elección de universidad por parte de los estudiantes muestra cómo precio y distancia son los principales factores que explican esta decisión. Sin embargo, estos estudios no incorporan prácticamente indicadores de calidad de las universidades a la hora de escoger universi¬dad. En este artículo estimamos un modelo de elección de universidad que incorpora indicadores sobre la calidad del profesorado, así como indicadores sobre la calidad académica de los estudiantes. Los re¬sultados, basados en datos sobre universidades públicas situadas en Barcelona para los estudios de Eco¬nomía, ADE y Empresariales, indican el efecto positivo de estos indicadores en las decisiones de los estudiantes. Adicionalmente, los resultados sugieren una posible estratificación de universidades y se¬gregación de los estudiantes por niveles de calidad académica.

This paper uses insights from behavioral economics to explain a particularly surprising borrowing phenomenon: one in six undergraduate students offered interest-free loans turns them down. Models of impulse control predict that students may optimally reject subsidized loans to avoid excessive consumption during school. Using the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, we investigate students' take-up decisions and identify a group of students for whom the loans create an especially tempting liquidity increase. Students who would receive the loan in cash are significantly more likely to turn it down, suggesting that consumers choose to limit their liquidity in economically meaningful situations. © 2013 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Education remains one of the most important factors in shaping the assembly of skills and knowledge, of an individual, in a particular area of interest. Therefore, it is important for the individual to ensure a permanent preoccupation for a continuous evolution in a certain field of specialization. On the other hand, the state is the one involved in a direct educational or vocational training of human resources at a national level. This can be considered as a premise or a starting point for a future efficient human resource management, as a basis on which and depending of which there can be built the right strategies for achieving optimal performance.

Empirical studies of the relationship between school inputs and test scores typically do not account for the fact that households will respond to changes in school inputs. This paper presents a dynamic household optimization model relating test scores to school and household inputs, and tests its predictions in two very different low-income country settings -- Zambia and India. The authors measure household spending changes and student test score gains in response to unanticipated as well as anticipated changes in school funding. Consistent with the optimization model, they find in both settings that households offset anticipated grants more than unanticipated grants. They also find that unanticipated school grants lead to significant improvements in student test scores but anticipated grants have no impact on test scores. The results suggest that naïve estimates of public education spending on learning outcomes that do not account for optimal household responses are likely to be considerably biased if used to estimate parameters of an education production function.