women s discrimination in developing countries a new data set for better policies summary based on a new data set this paper develops two innovative indicators to measure gender inequalities in developing countries the indicators measure different aspects of constraints imposed on women by social institutions that is laws norms traditions and codes of conduct that exist in societies for centuries the paper finds that social institutions are the most important single factor determining women s participation in economic activities outside the household

taxation of outbound direct investment economic principles and tax policy considerations this paper reviews economic principles for optimality of the taxation of international profit from both a global and national perspective it argues that for traditional systems based on the residence of the investor or the source of the income nothing less than full harmonisation across countries can achieve global optimality the conditions for national optimality are more difficult to identify but are most likely to imply source based taxation however source based taxation requires an allocation of the profits of multinational companies to individual jurisdictions this is not only very difficult in practice but in some cases is without any conceptual foundation the taxation of interest income on a residence basis is also hard to justify if the aim of the tax system is to tax only the income arising from economic activity in a given country

are emotions to blame the impact of non analytical information processing on decision making and implications for fostering sustainability policy advice based on a rationalist perspective to foster sustainable behaviour has approached its limits and gaps in the established models are becoming more and more obvious to better understand how unsustainable choices are made and to foster sustainable decision making alternatives to the rationalist models of human decision making need to be investigated such alternative models have already demonstrated their usefulness in other fields than ecological economics the paper begins with a presentation of conventional models of human behaviour as well as their advances and limitations in ecological and behavioural economics in most of these models the dominance of analytical thinking still prevails i identify this as problematic given the evidence for the influence of emotion and intuition in decision making to offer a perspective on human behaviour that acknowledges this influence dual process models are presented established applications of these models are then used to propose four basic types of explanations for unsustainable behaviour based on these explanations preliminary ideas to promote sustainable decision making are developed these ideas are considerably different from policy implications of the established economic model

the gender gap fertility and growth changes in fertility have long been recognized as important correlates of economic growth with the relationship between the level of fertility and the level of income per capita being one of the strongest observable correlations in cross country data this paper examines the linkages between fertility and growth theory the structure of the model is presented in sections on production couples decision making system dynamics and steady state equilibria the first component of the model is that increases in capital per worker raise womens relative wages since capital is more complementary to womens labor input than to mens the second component is that increasing womens relative wages reduces fertility by raising the cost of children more than household income finally lower fertility raises the level of capital per worker a positive feedback loop generates demographic transition a rapid decline in fertility accompanied by accelerated output growth

eldercare hours work hours and perceived filial obligations in this paper we take a fresh look at the magnitude of the trade off between caring informally for a parent and paid work we adopt a simultaneous approach with a primary focus on how hours of car

detecting abnormal credit union performance abstract credit unions are an important financial intermediary but little credit union research is done a primary reason for the lack of research is the cooperative nature of the industry making traditional methods of detecting abnormal performance inappropriate this paper proposes two methods of detecting abnormal performance one parametric the other non parametric instead of testing the efficiency of the institution this paper proposes testing the return vector as indicated in the theoretical objective function of the member simulations demonstrate that both methods are correctly specified and powerful

credit union rate and earnings retention decisions under uncertainty and taxation this paper presents a model of credit union loan and deposit rate setting when net income flows are uncertain and subj ect to taxation optimal rates are chosen to maximize the expected va lue of a performance measure based on a comparison of the credit unio n s rates to alternative rates subject to a probabilistic constraint on the net change in capital reserves relative to a capital adequacy standard taxation will alter the end of period trade off between th e change in capital reserves and the immediate distribution of surplu s and would likely affect credit unions in a nonuniform manner and p erhaps be regressive in nature copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

classroom experiments not just fun and games i introduction historically economics was the classic example of a science in which laboratory methods are impossible consistent with this view economics has traditionally been taught as a theory intensive science rather than as an experimental one however the view that economics is not a laboratory science has been changing in large part due to the increase in research conducted using experimental methods in addition as evidence of the benefits of active learning for students has been gathered leaders in the field of education have been urging faculty to actively engage students in the process of learning introducing experimental methods into the economics classroom is a natural step warranted both by the evolution of the discipline itself and the need to more actively involve students in the learning process this paper presents results from a research project examining the effectiveness of using economics experiments in the classroom the project involved designing course packages for the principles of microeconomics and principles of macroeconomics classes that integrate basic economic experiments into the curricula and then evaluating their success as a teaching tool the evaluation phase focused on assessing the impact of this curriculum on student performance student attitudes towards economics and economic knowledge retention the project was conducted over a three year period during the initial phase of the research project both the course materials and an assessment instrument for evaluating the effectiveness of those materials were developed 1 next a controlled experiment using students at the university of arkansas was conducted students who enrolled in principles of macroeconomics and principles of microeconomics courses were separated into control and treatment classes both groups were taught using a general lecture class discussion format but experiments designed to illustrate specific economic concepts were used in the treatment sections in place of the additional lecture class discussion and examples used in the control classes for those topics relative performance on the assessment instrument serves as the basis for evaluating the impact of the new curricula on student learning while controlling for other factors that might affect student performance an attitude survey was administered to the students at the beginning and at the end of the courses in both the treatment and control groups to gain insight into their attitudes towards the study of economics and whether those attitudes changed over the course of the semester 2 in addition to assessing the impact of classroom experiments on student performance and attitudes towards economics their impact on knowledge retention was also investigated students were tracked into a required advanced business course where their performance on a test of material covered in the introductory economics courses was used to evaluate the impact of classroom experiments on their retention of this material although we had no a priori expectations of what the specific outcomes from the evaluative portion would be we hypothesized that students would benefit overall from the use of experiments and that this benefit would be dispersed differentially based on student learning styles we also anticipated that we would find an improved attitude towards the study of economics and an increase in knowledge retention when experiments were implemented as active learning tools ii background in their 1985 edition of principles of economics samuelson and nordhaus argued one possible way of figuring out economic laws is by controlled experiments economists unfortunately cannot perform the controlled experiments of chemists or biologists because they cannot easily control other important factors like astronomers or meteorologists they generally must be content largely to observe

the costs of missing the millennium development goal on gender equity abstract at the millennium summit the world community pledged to promote gender equality and chose as a specific target the achievement of gender equity in primary and secondary education by the year 2005 in every country of the world based on the findings from a growing empirical literature that suggests that gender equity in education promotes economic growth reduced fertility child mortality and undernutrition we estimate what the costs in terms of growth and forgone fertility mortality and undernutrition reduction will be for the 45 countries that are on current projections unlikely to meet the target our estimates suggest that by 2005 the countries that are off track are likely to suffer 0 1 0 3 percentage points lower per capita growth rates as a result will have 0 1 0 4 more children per woman and by 2015 an average of 15 per 1 000 higher rates of under five mortality and 2 5 percentage points higher prevalence of underweight children under five sensitivity analyses suggest that the results are quite robust to using different specifications and approaches to estimating these losses

an aggregate model of the credit union industry prior to 1971 credit unions cus were almost exclusively short term lenders with their deposit base consisting primarily of passbook share accounts radical institutional changes during the 1970 s have reshaped the industry and increased the competition between cus and other financial institutions the introduction of federal share insurance in 1971 coupled with the highest deposit ceiling allowed by regulators allowed cus to attract funds from other intermediaries while cus have a yield advantage they have been much slower to introduce day of deposit to day of withdrawal interest accumulation so that many cu deposits may be regarded more as short term certificate accounts rather than open passbooks thus as the federal reserve system and the federal home loan bank board have liberalized cu yields maturities and minimum denominations it has affected cus ability to attract share deposits substantial competition exists in loan markets as well banks finance companies and the credit acceptance subsidies of many manufacturing corporations also extend consumer credit while cus have entered mortgage markets in this study a six equation simultaneous model is developed to estimate three different aggregate flows within the industry new loan extensions net share flows and net change in financial investments two price variables the average cu loan rate and average dividend rate and the median maturity on newly extended loans to account for endogenous changes in non price terms which may affect both the supply and demand for loans this study is important to both researchers and policymakers despite the movement to make credit unions more like and more competitive with other financial institutions there remains a general perception that cus are different that they cannot be analyzed by applying well known economic theories and methods and that they remain insulated from both general economic conditions and competition the evidence from this study suggests that those perceptions are in error even though the industry remains small relative to other providers of consumer financial services because cus are no longer insulated it is important to know the impact of changing economic conditions on the industry department of economics john carroll university funding by the national credit union administration ncua is gratefully acknowledged participants in a seminar at ncua provided the author with seveal suggestions which were incorporated in the research special thanks are due to john wolken who spent countless hours in discussion with the author and catherine melfi and george kosicki who provided research assistance any remaining errors or omissions are the sole responsibility of the author

human capital family planning and their effects on population growth statistical evidence at the household level suggests that fertility and child mortality are related to factors specified by economic models of family resource allocation and behavior several of these factors such as women s education and family planning appear to decrease both fertility and child mortality leaving in doubt what net effects these human capital and social welfare programs have had on the recent slowing of world population growth the specific factors considered here include family planning programs human capital endowments of women and men natural resource wealth other economic structural determinants of the costs and benefits of children and the availability of nutritional inputs cross sectional relationships are reported and changes within countries are analyzed with fixed effect methods using data for 68 lowincome countries for the last two decades

the perseverance of paul samuelson s economics a reflection of the economics profession through paul samuelson s economics samuelson offers an uneasy mix of laissez faire in micro and government interventionism in macro in earlier editions keynesian thinking dominated with an antisaving progovernment bias and a need for an activist fiscal policy aimed at alleviating unpredictable chronic business cycles under private enterprise middle editions had chapters on the soviet union and china rather than japan and west germany recently samuelson and coauthor william nordhaus have gradually shifted from antithrift to prosavings policies from deficit spending to fiscal restraint and from fiscal policy to monetary policy as effective countercyclical tools

undp s gender related indices a critical review abstract this paper critically reviews the two gender related indices proposed by undp in the 1995 human development report the gender related development index gdi and the gender empowerment measure gem while supporting the need to develop indicators that reliably track women s empowerment gem as well as the impact of gender inequality on overall human development gdi we argue that the particular ways in which these indices were constructed and the assumptions made to overcome data gaps severely limit their usefulness and result in very misleading international comparisons wherever appropriate we suggest remedies for some of the shortcomings identified

economics coursework and long term behavior and experiences of college graduates in labor markets and personal finance i introduction if economics is a unique way of thinking as many economists like to claim some level of coursework in economics may provide enough specific knowledge and skills to lead students to make different choices in their adult roles as consumers workers and voters citizens of course the same could be claimed for training in business and other areas even though or perhaps because it could be argued that most content and training in business courses is more applied and pragmatic than what is presented in economics courses some empirical evidence though not really a great deal suggests that training in economics and business is associated with different adult behaviors and outcomes for example golec 1996 finds that mutual funds perform better if mutual fund managers have an mba and chevalier and ellison 1999 also report a positive correlation between mutual fund performance and the educational background of mutual fund managers black sanders and taylor 2003 found that economics majors earn almost 20 more than graduates in other social science majors and about 10 more than those who major in business administration in fields with large numbers of graduates they find that only engineering majors earn more than economics majors similarly hecker 1995 reported that males majoring in economics had median earnings 3 higher than all majors for the age cohort of 25 34 and 53 more than average for the cohort aged 35 44 craft and baker 2003 find that lawyers with an undergraduate major in economics earn 13 more than otherwise comparable lawyers with other undergraduate majors and economics is the only major with a statistically significant effect on earnings 1 hamermesh and donald 2008 however find that higher earnings by economics majors are partly due to economics majors working more hours than others the relationship between financial literacy knowledge and adult behavior and outcomes in financial markets has been addressed in several recent studies many sponsored by federal reserve banks hilgert hogarth and beverly 2003 and braunstein and welch 2002 find that knowledge about credit saving and investment is significantly related to recommended financial practices in cash flow management credit management saving and investment unfortunately there is also evidence of widespread financial illiteracy in u s households and particularly among elderly women see lusardi and mitchell 2007 2008 employee education programs have been found to affect workers savings retirement and investment behaviors bayer bernheim and scholz 2009 bernheim and garret 2003 state mandates for precollege education in personal finance appear to succeed in at least exposing students to more information and sources on financial education and students from states with such mandates report higher levels of savings and net worth as adults bernheim garrett and maki 2001 tennyson and nguyen 2001 much less research exists linking college coursework or majoring in economics to personal finance outcomes 2 but christiansen joensen and rangvid 2008 find that those trained in economics in college courses or employee education programs are more likely to invest in stocks than those who receive training in other areas guiso and jappelli 2005 report that among college graduates having a degree in economics is positively associated with knowledge about financial assets chert and volpe 1998 107 concluded that business majors had better knowledge about personal financial literacy than other students but that in general college students were not knowledgeable about personal finance 3 in this paper we use a large and unique data set to investigate the relationships between taking college coursework in economics or majoring in economics with long term labor market and personal finance behaviors and outcomes our information on long term behaviors and outcomes is drawn from a detailed questionnaire we mailed in january 2003 to over 25 000 graduates who attended four public universities in 1976 1986 or 1996

the state of economic education during the first fifty years of the american economic association aea its leaders considered the teaching of economics to be an important subject for discussion and debate aea founders set as a goal to educate public opinion about economic questions and economic literature elton hinshaw and siegfried 1991 p 373 during the last 50 years aea leaders have largely ceded questions on teaching to specialists in 1955 the association created the committee on economic education cee and charged it with improving the status of economic education within the profession stimulating and encouraging professional work on economic education and arranging economics education sessions at the aea meetings the association later revised the charge to include actively improving the quality of economic education at all levels from pre college to college adult and general economic education hinshaw and siegfried 1991 it is time to direct the attention of the entire profession not just economic education specialists toward the importance of educating a broad spectrum of the public about economics

choose choose choose choose choose choose choose emerging and prospective research on the deleterious effects of living in consumer hyperchoice the ideology of consumption and the imperative of consumer choice have washed across the globe in today s developed economies there is an ever increasing amount of buying amidst an ever increasing amount of purchase options amidst an ever increasing amount of stress amidst an ever decreasing amount of discretionary time this brief essay reviews research suggesting for example that hyperchoice confuses people and increases regret that hyperchoice is initially attractive but ultimately unsatisfying and that hyperchoice is psychologically draining future research is then discussed including how and why hyperchoice may have other toxic effects on people including the degrading of moral emotions and behavior

use it or lose it teaching literacy in the economics principles course americans know little about economics recent surveys document shocking gaps in understanding of markets macroeconomic policy and the economics of government both the general public and college students including economics course takers do poorly on questions that check their knowledge in a gallup survey william b walstad and max larsen 1992 most knew that competitive prices are determined by supply and demand but 65 percent of the public and 43 percent of college seniors believed that during a crisis in the middle east government should prohibit oil companies from raising prices p 65 in a harris poll parade magazine 1999 only 58 percent of adults knew that people are likely to respond to a doubling in the relative price of beef by buying more poultry and less beef only one in three understood that those who borrow money at a fixed interest rate are most likely to benefit from inflation in a minneapolis federal reserve survey david fettig 1998 only 30 percent knew that government could reduce high inflation by decreasing spending and the money supply taking a high school or college economics course has little impact on economic understanding walstad and ken rebeck 2002 in a 15 question gallup survey of college seniors college economics course takers scored 9 highschool economics course takers scored 8 and those who took no economics scored 7 walstad and sam allgood 1999 there is hope test takers do better with questions that concern their day to day lives louis harris and associates 1999 and adults believe economics is important 88 percent want politicians to have a good understanding of economics and 96 percent think that basic economics should be taught in high school harris and associates 1999 while objections can be raised about what questions were asked and how they were worded national surveys administered by several respected firms support the same conclusion americans know little about economics

how economists allocate time to teaching and research abstract this study investigates three questions i are there differences in teaching and research behavior between economists and other professors ii do economists in the top 100 research dep

globalisation women s economic rights and forced labour economy s penetration by foreign direct investment by and large has no sta tistically significant impact globalisation might weaken the general bargaining position of labour such that outcome related la bour standards might suffer however being more open toward trade is likely to promote rather than hinder the realisation of t wo labour rights considered as core or fundamental by the international labour organisation namely the elimination of economic discrimination and of forced labour

an economic theory of a credit union the majority of research to date on cus has been empirical cf cargill 1 and kidwell and peterson 7 yet there is serious need to develop a theoretical framework of cu behavior that incorporates their unique characteristics a cu is essentially a financial intermediation cooperative however the standard theoretical treatments of financial intermediaries cf meyer 8 and cooperative enterprises cannot be directly applied to model credit union behavior there are two principal characteristics of cus that prevent this first in a cu and cooperatives in general the members are both the owners of the organization and the consumers of its output or suppliers of its input one cannot simply assume that the members seek to maximize the profit generated by their transactions with the cu irrespective of the price and quantities of those same transactions thus models of a financial firm based on profit maximization cannot be directly translated to a cu environment second in a cu the membership provides both the demand for and supply of loanable funds the cu then intermediates between its member savers and member borrowers this heterogeneity is an inherent source of conflict between members clearly a cu cannot simultaneously maximize its dividend rate for savers and minimize its loan rate for borrowers since most theoretical models of cooperative enterprises assume a homogeneous member objective they are not generally applicable to cus there are two basic requirements for a framework to model cu behavior first the specification of the objective function should focus on the value of cu participation to the members this value should include the prices and quantities of transactions as well as any profit that results second the analysis should explicitly consider the possibility of conflict among members and the resolution of that conflict being a preference to either the borrowers or savers the existing literature on cus contains a wide variety of objective functions hempel and yawitz 5 ignore the owners are consumers issue and simply contend that cus like other financial intermediaries should maximize profit most writers however recognize that profit maximization would be a somewhat incongruous objective for an organization that typically labels itself not for profit murray and white 9 use cost minimization subject to an output constraint keating 6 employs the managerial discretion approach by maximizing the manager s utility function subject to minimum member benefit constraints taylor 11 12 suggests that the cu should minimize the difference between its average loan rate and savings rate paid smith 10 argues that the cu should

marginalization revisited women s market work and pay and economic development abstract a substantial literature argues that women have been left out of economic development but evidence from labor force surveys in middle income developing countries suggests otherwise women s participation rates in the market labor force have been increasing women have shifted into white collar occupations and certain previously male dominated occupations have become female dominated clerical work in asia for example women s relative pay has risen somewhat faster in asia and latin america than occurred during industrialization in the united states although inequalities remain there is no evidence that women on average are being marginalized

religion and economic performance summary this paper investigates the relationship between religion and economic performance in both cross country and within country regressions the null hypothesis that religious affiliation is uncorrelated with performance can frequently be rejected i e religion matters though the regressions do not yield a robust pattern of coefficients with respect to particular religions the results with respect to islam do not support the notion that it is inimical to growth on the contrary virtually every statistically significant coefficient on muslim population shares reported in this paper in both cross country and within country statistical analyses is positive if anything islam promotes growth

a meta analysis of the international gender wage gap abstract since the early 1970s a number of authors have calculated gender wage differentials between women and men of equal productivity this meta study provides a new quantitative review of this vast amount of empirical literature on gender wage differentials as it concerns not only differences in methodology data and time periods but also different countries we place particular emphasis on a proper consideration of the quality of the underlying study which is done by a weighting with quality indicators the results show that data restrictions i e the limitation of the analysis to new entrants never marrieds or one narrow occupation only have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap moreover we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying wage equation like the frequent use of potential experience has on the calculated gender wage gap over time raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially however most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females

the effect of trade openness on women s welfare and work life summary this study of 134 countries analyzes whether women are generally the losers or winners of globalization the results show that economic integration does not directly improve women s life expectancies women s access to primary and secondary education may improve slightly although women s welfare does not seem to improve more than that of men on the other hand economic integration does influence women s professional lives in developing countries trade openness increases female labor force participation in industrialized states it decreases the share of working women trade openness in developed countries increases the number of women employed in the service sector while in developing states it increases the number of women working in industrial jobs and in agriculture

gender inequality and economic growth a reply to schober and winter ebmer summary using data from a meta wage analysis schober and winter ebmer fail to confirm my earlier finding that gender wage inequality stimulates growth in semi industrialized economies sies the authors contend their wage data based on micro level studies with heterogeneous coverage are superior to the education adjusted manufacturing wages on which my paper relied in response i elucidate why wage data should be restricted to the manufacturing sector i explore possible measurement errors their data introduce and note concerns with the meta regression approach that limit the applicability of these data to the specific task of understanding the growth effect of gender inequality in sies finally i discuss advances made over the last decade in the methodology used to evaluate gender effects on growth identifying directions for new research on this important topic

a matter of opinion how ecological and neoclassical environmental economists and think about sustainability and economics abstract the differing paradigms of ecological and neoclassical environmental economics have been described in various articles and books and are also embedded in different professional associations however we cannot take for granted that the paradigm debates described in the literature are actually mirrored in exactly the same way in the perceptions and opinions of researchers looking at sustainability from an economic perspective this paper presents empirical results from a german case study on how economists and others involved in sustainability research from different schools of thought think about the issues of sustainability and economics how they group around these issues how they feel about the current scientific divide and what they expect to be future topics of sustainability research we analyze the data using cluster analysis based on a literature survey we generated forty sustainability economics related statements and asked 196 sustainability researchers about their degree of agreement or disagreement with these statements in evaluating our survey results we discuss to what extent the clusters that we identified do or do not represent the two schools of thought of ecological and neoclassical environmental economics we also propose some fields of research that can help to bridge the gaps amongst sustainability economics researchers while clearly marking others that are more suitable for a scientific competition of ideas key results of the study are we identify two primary scientific clusters one clearly confirming the existence of the ecological economics school of thought and the other largely capturing the neoclassical environmental view yet there are some surprising exceptions both schools of thought share a conceptual definition of sustainability that is integrative in considering ecological societal and economic dimensions three pillar concept and is geared at preserving the development potentials of society we also find a shared critique of pure economic growth strategies in our sample these shared opinions may provide bridging concepts between the schools of thought also both clusters agree with respect to a wide range of future fields of sustainability economics research yet the research agenda of the ecological economics cluster contains a large number of additional topics primarily related to social distributional and evolutionary aspects of sustainable development strong divides between the clusters that seem to be more suitable for a scientific competition of ideas are primarily related to the question of how to achieve sustainability including appropriate environmental policies

haddad lawrence john hoddinott and harold alderman eds intrahousehold resource allocation in developing countries models methods and policy baltimore md johns hopkins university press 1997 384 pp 55 00 in this volume economists demographers sociologists and anthropologists collaborate in the study of how resources are allocated within households in developing countries and why it matters from a policy perspective surveying a broad range of theory and evidence the contributors examine the many social and cultural factors that influence decisions about the family and household level about the allocation of time income assets and other resources ths contributors show that a more complete understanding of intrahousehold behaviour can increase the likelihood that policies will reach the people they are intended to affect

the rebirth of the liberal creed paths to neoliberalism in four countries1 since the 1970s market based economic policies have been institutionalized as a nearly global policy paradigm using four national case studies this article shows that economic and financial globalization played a critical role in fostering the transition to neoliberal policies but that local institutional conditions were decisive in shaping the nature and meaning of the shift while the analysis finds that developing countries appear more dependent upon direct external pressures than developed ones it also shows that institutionalized patterns of state society relations determined the way in which neoliberal transitions were carried out somewhat irrespectively of the level of economic development in chile and britain poorly mediated distributional conflict created the ideological conditions for a monetarist revolution in mexico and france on the other hand neoliberalism was understood mainly as a necessary step to adapt the country to the international economy

a theoretic framework for the analysis of credit union decision making this paper presents a formal theoretic framework to analyze credit union interest rates on loans and savings deposits the unique motivational and institutional features of a credit union in particular its structure as a financial service cooperative are used to develop the objective function this is based on a comparison of the credit union s rates to alternatively available market rates and includes parameters to recognize the possibility of borrower saver conflict the principal result is that the optimal rates and reactions to exogenous changes depend critically on the preference of the organization toward financial gain to the borrowing and saving members

people s opium religion and economic attitudes since max weber there has been an active debate on the impact of religion on people s economic attitudes much of the existing evidence however is based on cross country studies in which this impact is confounded by differences in other institutional factors we use the worldvalues surveys to id entify the relationship between intensity of religious beliefs and economic attitudes controlling for country fixed effects we study several economic attitudes towardcooperation the government working women legal rules thriftiness andthe market economy we also distinguish across religious denominations differentiating on whether a religion is dominant in a country we find that on average religious beliefs are associated with good economic attitudes where good is defined as conducive to higher per capita income andgrowth yet religious people tendto be more racist andless favorable with respect to working women these effects differ across religious denominations overall we find that christian religions are more positively associatedwith attitudes conducive to economic growth r 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification a1 e0 n4 z1

paths to development is there a bangladesh surprise using aggregate indices of education health demographic and gender equality outcomes we empirically investigate the hypothesis that bangladesh achieved a higher level of social development compared with countries of similar level of per capita income stylized facts and cross country regression results support this hypothesis for a broad range of dimensions further tests show that such achievements do not simply reflect income mediated channels and social expenditure programs we conclude by speculating on the role of bangladesh s development to sustain the process of growth and on the role of governance and institutional quality for the nexus between growth and development

engaging students in quantitative analysis with short case examples from the academic and popular press following the completion of microand macroeconomics principles courses for which the majority of students are enrolled to fulfill requirements for other majors economics majors take two intermediate micro and macro courses a course in statistics econometrics and some field courses that may or may not include more quantitative methods john siegfried et al 1991 in a national survey michael watts and i found some differences between the way statistics and econometrics courses are taught and the way the other undergraduate economics courses are taught becker and watts 1996 in particular problem sets are used more in statistics and econometrics than in other undergraduate economics courses curiously however those applications are not based on events reported in newspapers magazines and journals that economists read how timely and relevant can problem sets be if they are not documented in current events ideally instructors set problems raised by their own research and consulting problems students can expect to see on their jobs after all the rationale for teaching statistics and econometrics outside a mathematics department rests on a belief that there is something special about economic analyses that is economists use of statistics is tied to the issues they face although the calculation of a mean and a median for example is the same in medicine and economics a discussion of the average duration of economic expansions since world war ii is more pertinent to those majoring in economics than is a discussion of average blood pressure or average time to dementia with mad cow disease the importance of economic tleory is often lost when mathematicians attempt to make situations real as seen for example in the chance course j laurie snell and john finn 1992 where a potpourri of statistical applications are presented with no disciplinegrounded analyses to teach students to apply the tools of statistics to actual situations and data encountered by economists there is little justification for examples involving the drawing of balls from urns flickng of spinners tossing of coins or contrived card and dice tricks yet these methods of generating data continue to be found in the activity based teaching and assessment discussants william greene new york university robin lumsdaine brown university kim sosin university of nebraska omaha

the test of understanding of college economics this edition of the test of understanding of college economics tuce 4 is a revision of a test that was developed 40 years ago and has a long history of use by teachers and research ers in the economics profession the previous editions and their uses have been described in earlier studies e g rendigs fels 1967 phillip saunders fels and arthur l welsh 1981 saunders 1991 and in research in economic education e g william e becker 1997 as with past editions the tuce 4 has two main objectives to offer a reliable and valid assessment instrument for students in principles of economics courses and to provide norming data for a national sample of students in prin ciples classes so instructors can compare the performance of their students on a pretest and a posttest with this national sample separate exams were prepared in microeconomics and macroeconomics both exams consist of 30 multiple choice items and can be administered within the time constraints of a single class period for most course formats what follows is a description of the revision process the con tent and cognitive specifications the norming sample and the statistical characteristics of the tuce 4

the instructional use and teaching preparation of graduate students in u s ph d granting economics departments graduate students are employed extensively in the teaching of economics at the undergraduate level but little is known about how they are used for instruction and how they are prepared for their teaching duties to investigate this topic we prepared a survey and sent it to the chairs of all 100 ph d granting economics departments the survey was designed to elicit information on i the size of ph d economics programs and the uses of graduate students for undergraduate instruction ii the provision of credit and noncredit courses in teaching for economics graduate student instructors iii teaching programs for international graduate students serving as economics instructors and iv the uses of teaching evaluation for graduate student instructors in economics two members of the aea committee on economic education reviewed initial drafts of the survey several economists with extensive experience in survey work and the teaching preparation of economics graduate students also provided constructive criticism it underwent five revisions before it was sent to department chairs via regular mail in mid august 2002 we received 85 of 100 surveys mailed this high response rate was achieved through two follow up mailings to nonresponding chairs and by assuring all respondents that only the aggregate findings would be reported the response rate was also high across departments regardless of research ranking see thursby 2000 it was 88 percent for the top third of departments 97 percent for the middle third and 71 percent for the lowest third the higher response rate for the middle third is probably because more graduate students teach at these mostly large public universities the lower response rate for the bottom third departments reflects some difficulty in contacting their chairs but it might also indicate less activity to report

is there a consensus among economists in the 1990 s in a 1976 survey kearl et al 1979 hereafter the 1976 survey concluded that the then widespread perception that there was little agreement among professional economists on matters of theory or policy was simply wrong however the most casual empiricism namely the continuing popularity of jokes about disagreements among economists suggests the perception of noneconomists has not changed much since the 1970 s what is the present state of consensus among economists this question is of interest because more than a decade has elapsed since the 1976 survey and during this time many issues confronting economists and the composition of the profession have changed 1 benjamin m friedman and lawrence h summers 1991 p ix for example have asserted that economic thinking in many subfields of the discipline now differs markedly from what it was in 1970 consensus among european economists has been examined by bruno s frey et al 1984 martin ricketts and edward shoesmith 1990 1992 focus exclusively on british economic opinion this paper provides the first general analysis of opinions of u s economists in more than a decade i the survey and questionnaire

crop choice school participation and child labor in developing countries cotton expansion in burkina faso we estimate the effects of changes in cotton adoption on children s schooling and child labor in rural burkina faso using time and spatial variations we find evidence that expansion of cotton farming has led to an increase in enrollment and to a reduction of participation in child labor for girls there are however no detectable effects on boys in theory cotton adoption could increase household income leading to increased demand for schooling and reduced child labor on the other hand because children are productive on cotton farms adoption of cotton could increase the opportunity cost of child time and the demand for child labor we provide suggestive evidence showing that boys are more productive than girls on cotton farms taken together the results suggest that the income effect from cotton adoption might have been larger than the wage effect for girls hence the overall positive impacts on school enrollment for girls

patriarchal norms religion and female labor supply evidence from turkey summary despite significant structural and social change the share of women working or seeking jobs in turkey has declined this paper focuses on the role of social conservatism as a constraint for women s labor force participation using 2008 demographic and health survey data in analyzing labor supply model i incorporate cultural constraints specifically the sexual division of labor in the household and broader gender ideology into the analysis i find that both patriarchal norms and religiosity are negatively associated with female labor force participation and that the impact of patriarchal norms is statistically significant after controlling for endogeneity

why the gender gap in wages narrowed in the 1980s since 1976 the gender gap in wages on average declined by about 1 per year this article focuses on identifying the factors underlying this trend three data sets are analyzed the current population survey the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we find that convergence in measurable work related characteristics schooling and work experience explains one third to one half the narrowing the remainder is attributable to a relative increase in women s returns to experience as well as to declining wages in blue collar work and other factors

toward a new welfare economics for sustainability the debate over various definitions of sustainability has for the most part been conducted within the framework of traditional welfare economics discussion has centered on technical issues imbedded within the functional forms of various optimization models especially the coefficient of the elasticity of substitution and the social discount rate two more basic problems are 1 intractable theoretical difficulties within welfare economics call into question the results of traditional models of sustainability regarding intergenerational welfare and 2 equating per capita consumption with welfare contradicts empirical evidence suggesting that the link between happiness and wealth income is relatively weak alternative approaches to measuring well being are being developed and these have great potential to move the sustainability debate forward

low schooling for girls slower growth for all cross country evidence on the effect of gender inequality in education on economic development using cross country and panel regressions this article investigates how gender inequality in education affects long term economic growth such inequality is found to have an effect on economic growth that is robust to changes in specifications and controls for potential endogeneities the results suggest that gender inequality in education directly affects economic growth by lowering the average level of human capital in addition growth is indirectly affected through the impact of gender inequality on investment and population growth some 0 4 0 9 percentage points of differences in annual per capita growth rates between east asia and sub saharan africa south asia and the middle east can be accounted for by differences in gender gaps in education between these regions

gender inequality and economic growth a cross country analysis abstract this paper investigates empirically the determinants of economic growth for a set of semi industrialized export oriented economies in which women provide the bulk of labor in the export sector the primary hypothesis tested is that gender inequality which contributes to women s relatively lower wages was a stimulus to growth via the effect on exports during 1975 95 empirical analysis shows that gdp growth is positively related to gender wage inequality in contrast to recent work which suggests that income inequality slows growth evidence also indicates that part of the impact of gender wage inequality on growth is transmitted through its positive effect on investment as a share of gdp

wealthier is healthier we estimate the effect of income on health using cross country timeseries data on health infant and child mortality and life expectancy and income per capita we use instrumental variables estimates using exogenous determinants of income growth to identify the pure income effect on health isolated from reverse causation or incidental association the long run income elasticity of infant and child mortality in developing countries lies between 0 2 and 0 4 using these estimates we calculate that over a half a million child deaths in the developing world in 1990 alone can be attributed to the poor economic performance in the 1980s

benefit imbalances among credit union member groups evidence of borrower dominated saver dominated and neutral behaviour theoretical models of credit union cu behaviour suggest that cus may be saver dominated borrower dominated or neutral a cu is dominated if it is operated for the benefit of one member group at the expense of the other neutral behaviour occurs when a cu is managed so that both member groups are equally benefited this empirical study develops a direct measure of the monetary benefits to each member group and tests for the existence of dominated behaviour among us cus in 1984 and 1985 evidence of dominated and neutral behaviour is found and the operating characteristics of these distinct organizational forms are generally consistent with theoretical expectations

growth inequality and poverty looking beyond averages the evidence is compelling that the poor in developing countries do typically share in the gains from rising aggregate affluence and in the losses from aggregate contraction but how much do poor people share in growth do they gain more in some settings than others do some gain while others lose does pro poor growth mean more or less aggregate growth recent theories and evidence suggest some answers but deeper microeconomic empirical work is needed on growth and distributed change only then will we have a firm basis for identifying the specific policies and programs needed to complement and possibly modify growth oriented policies

chalk and talk a national survey on teaching undergraduate economics reports on the desirable goals and characteristics of economics programs and reforms proposed to attain such programs e g w lee hansen 1991 hirschel kasper et al 1991 have ignored the issue of how economics is to be taught that is surprising because several popular trade books have recently appeared condemning teaching practices at american colleges and universities some of these books were written by economists e g martin anderson s 1992 impostors in the temple and used economics courses as notable examples of these problems long before these reports and books appeared the national council on economic education ncee together with the american economic association s aea committee on economic education began sponsoring programs to improve the teaching of economics and to promote innovative teaching methods in becker and watts 1995 we describe many of these improvements and explain how economists could use alternative teaching methods in different undergraduate courses until now however we could not provide data on how widely those approaches were used we do that here based on responses to a national survey

islam authoritarianism and female empowerment what are the linkages most islamic countries are governed by authoritarian regimes and in most islamic countries women s economic social and political rights are significantly less than those of the men of their country these well known facts provide the basis for a highly original and important analysis by m steven fish 1 fish s major contribution is his suggestion that the relationships at issue are not merely a matter of spurious correlation but rather are indicative of a deep underlying causal pattern in a sophisticated cross national quantitative analysis he shows the following 1 even controlling for many other alleged influences on countries political systems countries with a largely islamic religious tradition have significantly more autocratic governments than do non islamic countries 2 controlling for level of economic development the condition of women is significantly worse in islamic countries than in others 3 in a more limited test even when controlling for economic development and islamic tradition a low level of women s rights may produce lower levels of democracy 4 more speculatively islamic states may be more autocratic so as to repress women s rights more effectively or autocratic government may permit and even require the repression of a range of human rights including those of women

views of teaching and research in economics and other disciplines anecdotes are often quite suggestive a graduate student in economics who was serving as a teaching assistant once reported that his major professor came into his office and told him that he was spending too much of his time helping his undergraduate students and not enough time on his research was the professor expressing a preference for time spent on teaching over research or was the professor suggesting to the student that the academic market rewards research more than teaching regardless the underlying message that gets transferred from such an experience as early as graduate education and perhaps throughout a career is that teaching is not as important or valuable as research such strong conclusions however should not be based on anecdotal evidence whether economics professors are less interested in teaching and more interested in research is an empirical question worthy of study although teaching and research choices made by economics faculty members reflect both preferences and choice sets in this study we focus on preferences and use a national survey to compare the teaching and research views of economists with faculty members in other major disciplines

a distributional analysis of the gender wage gap in bangladesh this article empirically investigates the gender wage gap in bangladesh during the period 2005 2009 applying unconditional quantile regression models the article demonstrates that women are paid less than men throughout the wage distribution and the gap is higher at the lower end of the distribution discrimination against women is the primary determinant of the wage gap the article also demonstrates that the observed gender wage gap is likely to be underestimated if we ignore selection in full time employment a number of policy implications are discussed

decomposing the gender gap in cognitive skills in a poor rural economy girls lag markedly behind boys in education in many developing countries which may slow economic growth and increase inequity this paper uses indicators of the output of the education production process cognitive skills to characterize and to investigate the determinants of the large educational gender gap in rural pakistan local school availability accounts for about a third of the total cognitive achievement gender gap and over two fifths of that in numeracy which implies that policies that increased local school availability for girls could reduce substantially the gender gaps in cognitive skills to further reduce these gender gaps will require policies that focus on the demand side of the market where our results suggest the response to modest changes in incentives may be high

microfinance and gender empowerment in this paper we develop a theoretical model of household production bargaining and credit to analyse how access to microcredit affects intra household decision making and welfare and identify conditions under which female household members are most likely to benefit we show that consistent with ethnographic accounts of the impact of microcredit programmes on poor households access to loans can lead to a variety of outcomes for intra household decision making and welfare depending on initial conditions and that in some instances women borrowers may experience a decline in welfare we identify two instances in which a woman is most likely to benefit when there is scope for investing the loan profitably in a joint activity and when a large share of the household budget is devoted to household public goods

south south migration and discrimination against women in social institutions a two way relationship summary using the social institutions and gender index sigi from the oecd development centre this paper provides evidence on the two way relationship between discrimination against women in social institutions and south south migration on the one hand discriminatory social institutions in both origin and destination countries are an additional determinant of female migration on the other hand migration implies changes in discrimination against women according to the level of gender inequalities at destination specifically migration toward countries with low levels of discrimination promotes gender equality in social institutions at home while migration toward destinations with high levels of discrimination has the reverse effect

unequal laws and the disempowerment of women in the labor market evidence from firm level data institutions are defined as the set of rules that govern human interactions when these rules are discriminatory they may disempower segments of a population in the economic spheres of activity this study explores whether laws that discriminate against women influence their engagement in the economy the study adopts a holistic approach exploring an overall measure of unequal laws also known as legal gender disparities and relates it to several labor market outcomes for women using data for more than 60 000 firms across 104 economies the study finds that unequal laws not only discourage women s participation in the private sector workforce but also their likelihood to become top managers and owners of firms suggestive evidence indicates that access to finance and corruption are pathways by which legal gender disparities disempower women in the labor market

vocational training programs and youth labor market outcomes evidence from nepal abstract lack of skills is arguably one of the most important determinants of high levels of unemployment and poverty in response policymakers often initiate vocational training programs in effort to enhance skill formation among the youth using a regression discontinuity design we examine a large youth training intervention in nepal we find twelve months after the start of the training program that the intervention generated an increase in non farm employment of 10 percentage points itt estimates and up to 31 percentage points for program compliers late estimates we also detect sizeable gains in monthly earnings women who start self employment activities inside their homes largely drive these impacts we argue that low baseline educational levels and non farm employment levels and nepal s social and cultural norms towards women drive our large program impacts our results suggest that the program enables otherwise underemployed women to earn an income while staying at home close to household errands and in line with the socio cultural norms that prevent them from taking up employment outside the house

teaching economics at the start of the 21st century still chalk and talk in spring 2000 we conducted a national survey of academic economists to determine how economics is taught in four different types of undergraduate courses principles intermediate theory statistics and econometrics and other upper division courses at institutions in the five carnegie classifications research doctoral master s baccalaureate and associate as listed in a classification of institutions of higher education 1994 edition this new survey replicates our 1995 survey becker and watts 1996 therefore we can compare the results from the two surveys to document changes in teaching methods as well as the related academic issues that were addressed in the background information section of the surveys a key reason for believing that teaching methods might have changed during this period was the sharp decrease in economics enrollments during the early 1990 s becker 1997 john siegfried and david k round 2001 as we have documented elsewhere becker and watts 1998 there is evidence that economists are less likely to use non lecture teaching methods than instructors in other fields and that students rate economics instructors somewhat lower than they rate other instructors changing teaching methods and increasing the importance of teaching within economics departments in response to falling enrollments is therefore a plausible and endogenous response for faculty members and departments concerned about losing resources furthermore there is at least circumstantial evidence that economists are devoting more attention to teaching than in the recent past becker 2000 since our 1995 survey several books have been published to illustrate how economists can use a wide range of alternative teaching methods in undergraduate courses e g becker and watts 1998 william walstad and philip saunders 1998 other books have appeared focusing on specific teaching methods such as using classroom experiments spreadsheet applications or active learning and cooperative learning assignments e g diane keenan and mark h maier 1995 tod s porter and teresa riley 1995 theodore bergstrom and john h miller 1997 denise hazlett 1999 becker 2000 documents the increase in aea sessions devoted to teaching economics at the annual meetings of the allied social sciences association during the mid 1990 s at the 1998 2000 allied social sciences association assa meetings the number of sessions devoted to teaching economics ranged from 11 to 14 and presented sessions dealt with such topics as teaching economics in the transition economies chaired by world bank chief economist joseph stiglitz a retrospective on nobel laureate paul samuelson s principles textbook how faculty advisors can deal with student apprehensiveness about taking economics courses and teaching business economics chaired by nobel laureate ronald coase as recently as the 1996 assa meetings in san francisco there were only six sessions on teaching economics and at the 1994 meetings in boston there were only four such sessions similarly small numbers of sessions were scheduled through the 1980 s here we ask whether any increased emphasis on teaching in economics departments has led to changes in how economics is taught do academic economists report that they are now becker department of economics indiana university bloomington in 47405 e mail beckerw indiana edu and adjunct professor school of international business university of south australia watts department of economics purdue university west lafayette in 47905 e mail bfp mgmt purdue edu we thank julia k huffer kevin m green siddhartha kapoor chatchai meteveravong alexandre skiba and suzanne becker for help in the mailing data entry and tabulation and preparing of this paper financial support from the purdue university center for international business education and research university of south australia school of international business and the national council on economic education through its sponsorship of the journal of economic education is gratefully acknowledged

global social tolerance index and multi method country rankings sensitivity social tolerance refers to the extent of recognition and acceptance of differences willingness to grant equal rights and refraining from openly intolerant attitudes utilizing world value survey wvs data 56 countries 83 000 usable respondents we develop a global social tolerance index gsti that incorporates gender minority immigrant and religion tolerance dimensions we develop this index using a multi step data driven procedure involving five data standardizations seven weighting approaches and five aggregation methods they generate 124 replications for each country s index and rank yielding a median overall position and several measures of rank sensitivity robustness to different weighting standardization and aggregation approaches it builds on prior social tolerance indexes in terms of scope and dimensionality and avoids problems associated with equal or subjective weighting the gsti index rankings provide a tool for ib scholars to examine nations overall tolerance or tolerance regarding each dimension relative to other external criteria our procedure can be used to develop other indexes and rankings of nations or organizations within a country or region in practice any such non participatory method should always serve as a starting point to facilitate deliberations of experts and or decision makers for policy recommendations

credit union structure growth and regulatory problems at year end 1979 there were 12 738 federal and 4 769 state chartered federally insured credit unions in the united states their assets were 36 5 billion and 18 5 billion respectively the industry was the fastest growing of all financial intermediaries during the early to mid 1970s factors contributing to a growth rate of 18 percent from 1970 to 1978 were the absence of regulation q restrictions on cu dividend rates tax exempt status of cus the advent of share insurance in 1970 and the impact of sponsor subsidies however during 1979 federal credit union savings grew by only 2 4 which was more than 85 lower than in the preceding year and was the slowest annual growth rate on record indeed since 1977 federal credit unions have gone from the fastest growing to the second slowest growing type of depository institution the reason for the changes in credit unions will be discussed after this section which provides background information on the structure of the industry that structure has historically led to a reduction in risk the basic components of that structure are common bond and sponsorship common bond credit unions are unique financial depository institutions in that they are consumer cooperatives and are limited to serving the market for consumer credit and savings generally these institutions cannot do business with the general public due to charter limitations based on serving a membership that is characterized by a common bond the common bond is based on occupation association or residence the only exceptions are generally found under state law and apply to state chartered institutions the common bond restriction on credit union membership is assumed to reduce the cost of gathering credit information reducing bad debt losses and manifests national credit union administration the views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the national credit union administration an extensive review of the history of credit unions and the institutional structure is found in

explaining african economic performance africa has had slow growth and a massive exodus of capital in many respects it has been the most capital hostile region we review and interpret the aggregate level and microeconomic literatures to identify the key explanations for this performance there is a reasonable correspondence of the two sets of evidence pointing to four factors as being important these are a lack of openness to international trade a high risk environment a low level of social capital and poor infrastructure these problems are to a substantial extent attributable to government behaviour and the paper includes a review of the political economy literature which addresses that behaviour

the multidimensional effects of religion on socioeconomic development a review of the empirical literature religion plays a fundamental role in most people s lives with profound implications for socioeconomic development this survey provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of the causal mechanisms between religion and development discussed and tested in the economics literature and reviews quantitative empirical evidence on the actual effects of religion on economic and social dimensions of development we start by disaggregating the concept of religion into four religious dimensions and propose a framework to conceptualize causal mechanisms numerous mechanisms are possible but only a few uncontested findings exist religion is ambivalent vis a vis development although religious ideas can foster certain forms of human capital acquisition and labor market participation scholars have found a negative relationship between religious dimensions and both income and gender equality as well as innovation activities religious identity is also a source of labor market discrimination and has ambivalent effects on economic growth and social cohesion methodological challenges refer to the availability of fine grained data especially for developing countries the use of concepts and definitions and the lack of causal inference

mothers and sons preference formation and female labor force dynamics this paper argues that the growing presence of a new type of man one brought up in a family in which the mother worked has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time we present cross sectional evidence showing that the wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work we use variation in the importance of world war ii as a shock to women s labor force participation as proxied by variation in the male draft rate across u s states to provide evidence in support of the intergenerational consequences of our propagation mechanism

reverse gender gap in schooling in bangladesh insights from urban and rural households this paper documents a reverse gender gap in secondary schooling outcomes in bangladesh drawing upon several rounds of nationally representative household survey data in terms of enrolment status and years of schooling completed boys are found to lag behind girls in the rural as well as in the urban area within the urban sample the gender gap is widest in the non metropolitan area these findings are robust to extensive control for demand and supply side determinants of schooling and remain unchanged even when we use a within household estimator we consider one hypothesis namely gender differentiated response to a conditional cash transfer program to reconcile the findings of this reverse gender gap

searching for sustainability the poverty of spontaneous order abstract traditional approaches to sustainability rely on models that depend upon judgments of welfare across future generations right prices and some sense as to what future persons will find giving of utility these models both accept the spontaneous order of market processes and rely on that order to derive optimal consumption paths into the future sustainability is however not a problem of divining optimal paths predicated upon right prices rather sustainability to be operational requires a prior constructed order predicated upon rights for future persons and duties for those now living who sit in a position as dictator over the settings and circumstances that will be passed on to future persons rights based approaches to sustainability do not rely upon unknowable preferences of future persons but rather upon an environmental regency in which those now living agree to preserve settings and circumstances for the future this reminds us that the issue of sustainability concerns not how much to preserve but what to preserve

is there an informal employment wage penalty evidence from south africa abstract we estimate the wage penalty associated with working in the south african informal sector to this end we use a rich data set on non self employed males that allows one to accurately distinguish workers employed in the informal sector from those employed in the formal sector and link individuals over time implementing various econometric approaches we find that there is a gross wage penalty of a little over 18 for working in the informal sector however once we reduce our sample to a group for which we can reasonably calculate earnings net of taxes and control for time invariant unobservables the wage penalty disappears

green returns to education does schooling contribute to pro environmental behaviours evidence from thailand we investigate whether there are green returns to education where formal education encourages pro environmental behaviours using nationally representative surveys on environmental issues in thailand to establish the causal relationship between education and green behaviours we exploit the instrumental variables strategy using the supply of state primary schooling i e the corresponding number of teachers per 1000 children which varies over time and across regions as the instrument while controlling for regional cohort and income effects we find that more years of schooling lead to a greater probability of taking knowledge based environmentally friendly actions a great deal but not cost saving pro environmental actions in addition the paper finds no significant impact of formal education on concern about global warming nor the willingness to pay for environmental tax

gender wage inequality and economic growth is there really a puzzle a comment seguino 2000 shows that gender wage discrimination in export oriented semi industrialized countries might be fostering investment and growth in general while the original analysis does not have internationally comparable wage discrimination data we replicate the analysis using data from a meta study on gender wage discrimination and do not find any evidence that more discrimination might further economic growth on the contrary if anything the impact of gender inequality is negative for growth standing up for more gender equality also in terms of wages is good for equity considerations and at least not negative for growth

what students remember and say about college economics years later in his presidential address to the american economic association george stigler 1963 offered the provocative hypothesis that students would retain very little knowledge from principles courses in economics five years or more after taking the courses the few empirical studies that have been published on this topic generally found no or small lasting effects at least for those who took fewer than four courses see e g g l bach and phillip saunders 1965 gerald j lynch 1990 that raises even broader questions about the long term effects of studying economics in college in terms of individuals behavior as consumers workers and voters which we are now beginning to investigate using both survey and transcript data we have two major goals in this study first we want to learn how students perceive their classroom experience in economics courses years after leaving school both in absolute terms and compared to other courses they took we drew samples of economics business and other majors who attended our four universities in 1976 1986 and 1996 and asked which topics regularly covered in economics courses they now viewed as being most and least important we asked whether they now viewed the economics courses they took as interesting important too difficult or too abstract we also compared their perceptions of teaching methods and grading rigor in economics courses to those developed in other courses our second major goal represents an empirical test of the common claim that economics is a unique way of thinking if it is we might reasonably expect people with more training in economics to have different views on policy issues and to make different decisions as consumers workers savers investors and voters we collected survey data on many of these choices and by matching those responses with transcript data we plan to investigate whether there are observable behavioral responses associated with being an economics major or simply taking some minimum number of economics courses compared to students who took fewer courses or none at all there are other uses for these data they can likely be used to study choice of major and course taking behavior as well as common laboreconomics issues such as human capital versus screening in the labor market certainly the data can provide insight into curriculum development for economics departments and business schools as well there is obviously the potential for response biases in the analysis of these data but we expect that having transcript data for respondents and nonrespondents will allow us to deal with these issues econometrically this first brief report from this ongoing project addresses only the first goal of the project specifically how our former students evaluate their experience with economics courses and instructors what economic courses and concepts do they now believe are most important do they wish they had taken more or less coursework in economics what do they think now about various economic issues and allgood department of economics university of nebraska lincoln ne 68588 e mail sallgood unlnotes unl edu bosshardt department of economics florida atlantic university boca raton fl 33431 e mail wbosshar fau edu van der klaauw department of economics university of north carolina chapel hill nc 27599 e mail vanderkl email unc edu watts department of economics purdue university west lafayette in 47907 and while this paper was written the german international school of management and administration hanover germany e mail mwatts mgmt purdue edu we thank the board of the calvin k kazanjian economics foundation for the grant that made this work possible and the aea committee for economic education for bringing us together to write the proposal as described in michael salemi et al 2002 mike salemi provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper april fidler provided major assistance in project coordination administration and data entry georg schaur worked extensively with data organization and preliminary tabulations

a market clearing classroom experiment this paper describes a classroom experiment demonstrating the price mechanism and the clearing of markets in an endowment economy participants receive random endowments of two goods they may trade in order to maximize a given utility function a market clearing price is reached when no mutually beneficial trades are possible the outcome is truly endogenous with no reservation prices or willingness to trade imposed on the participants a problem set allows the participants to study the equilibrium outcome analytically the experiment can be used in intermediate micro and macroeconomic courses

gender inequality endogenous cultural norms and economic development this research focuses on the role played by cultural norms in the long run persistence of gender inequalities cultural norms about gender roles are considered to be endogenous and can generate gender inequality and low development traps indeed when the gender gap is internalized it leads to inegalitarian views about gender roles due to these inegalitarian beliefs boys receive more education and the initial gender gap is reinforced the existence of gender inequality traps is pointed out by the world bank as a major obstacle for economic development wdr 2006 the present article allows for a better understanding of the persistence of such traps and the means to escape

women food security and development in less industrialized societies contributions and challenges for the new century summary in this paper i examine the links between women food security and development from a crossnational perspective i find that the proximity to gender equality constructed from the united nations human development and gender related development indices improves development in the form of both child hunger and child mortality extending these results other forms of female empowerment including female contraceptive prevalence significantly improve development outcomes in less industrialized societies findings are net of theoretical controls for economic development population pressure globalization democratization and region further strengthening the importance of gender considerations countries that incorporate gender into policy and program considerations benefit from such inclusion in the form of social and economic development outcomes findings are an important crossnational extension of existing research utilizing new measures that capture the important development dynamic

economic schools of thought on the environment investigating unity and division how do ecological and heterodox economists differ if at all from each other and from neoclassical economists addressing environmental problems in 2009 we probed this question by conducting an international survey across these communities namely at conferences of the european society for ecological economics the association for heterodox economics and the european association of environmental and resource economists the research was designed to gain insight into the extent to which ecological economics can be described as heterodox and a distinct field from orthodox environmental and resource economics conflicting visions of ecological economics have led to a prevalence of neoclassical articles and thought mixed in amongst more heterodox work we introduce a novel classification of work in the field of environmental policy in order to test for the existence of differences in terms of methodological and ideological approaches how heterodox economists understand environmental issues is also an important question to answer if there is to be more collaboration between them and ecological economists the findings have implications for cooperation and the future direction of both ecological and heterodox economics

gender and multidimensional poverty in nicaragua an individual based approach most existing empirical papers concerned about multidimensional poverty use the household as the unit of analysis so that the multidimensional poverty status of the household is equated with the multidimensional poverty status of all its members this assumption ignores intra household inequalities additionally households containing both a female and a male cannot contribute to a gender gap in poverty so gender differentials in poverty cannot be estimated but the sustainable development goals have put special emphasis on gender equality therefore new measures able to capture the gender differences are needed consequently in this paper we propose an individual based multidimensional poverty measure in order to estimate the three i s of multidimensional poverty incidence intensity and inequality in nicaragua as well as the gender differentials we also estimate logit regressions to better understanding the determinants of multidimensional poverty in this country overall we find that there are statistically significant gender differences in multidimensional poverty in nicaragua but they are estimated to be small and lower than 5 however the gender differential in inequality is larger than 10 and it suggests that multi dimensionally poor women are living in very intense poverty when compared with multi dimensionally poor men we also find that the elderly and children are the most vulnerable people in terms of multidimensional poverty in this country furthermore when information on employment domestic work and social protection is considered in the analysis the gender gaps become more substantial and women are more likely to be poor than men

help or hindrance religion s impact on gender inequality in attitudes and outcomes summary this paper investigates the effect of religiosity on attitudes toward gender equality using world values survey data results indicate that religiosity is strongly correlated with gender inequitable attitudes across countries further ols tsls and 3sls regression estimates reveal that gender inequitable attitudes are associated with negative effects on seven measures of gender equality of well being and public policy no single religion stands out as more gender inequitable than others the impact of religiosity is likely transmitted via stealth effects on everyday behavior in economic transactions in labor markets household resource allocation and government spending

research in economic education five new initiatives research is essential for improvement in teaching and learning economics william e becker et al 1991 called for new research on the relative merits of multiple choice and essay tests on the lasting effects of course work in economics and on the effects of instructors instructional techniques and new technologies on student learning to respond to the call the committee on economic education cee of the american economic association recruited robin bartlett william becker w lee hansen peter kennedy and the authors to organize a conference that would jump start new research projects the organizers chose three conference goals identifying research priorities recruiting new economists to economic education research and building teams to undertake identified priorities they recruited 21 economists to participate 1 provided them with a list of potential research questions and asked them which questions were most important and which they were willing to work on with survey results in hand the organizers divided participants into five teams corresponding to the following five topics teaching methods and incentives for collegelevel economics instruction ph d education in economics in the united states improving the assessment of student learning in college economics courses long term effects of learning economics and efficiency in the use of technology in economic education at the conference participants discussed briefing papers prepared for each topic worked on project design and funding issues and began writing proposals herein we describe our research priorities and our progress in developing research plans and securing financial support

teaching un sustainability university sustainability commitments and student experiences of introductory economics the three largest public universities in british columbia canada have signed the talloires declaration committing themselves to promoting sustainability and creating expectations that they will integrate sustainability across the curriculum in order to improve students environmental literacy and stewardship about 40 of north american university students take a mainstream introductory economics course few of these students take economics at more advanced levels as such introductory economics courses are an important vehicle for students to learn economic theory they have the potential to contribute to the knowledge that students can mobilize to foster sustainability interviews were held with 54 students who had recently completed an introductory level mainstream economics course at one of the three universities students reported that introductory economics courses place little emphasis on the environment and sustainability they recalled course content with normative connotations that are problematic from a sustainability perspective and they described how discussion of the limitations of mainstream theory was set aside student reports of the insights introductory economics offers into environmental problems imply that these courses are failing to substantively increase students understanding of sustainability and linkages between the environment and the economy findings suggest that current introductory economics curriculum undermines the universities sustainability commitments

female migration a way out of discrimination abstract in light of the recent feminization of migration we empirically explore to what extent worldwide female migration can be explained by perceived gender discrimination making use of unique individual level data we track women s intention and preparation to migrate from 148 countries between 2009 2013 and disentangle how individual perceptions of gender discrimination can foster or impede female migration across countries we perform extensive robustness checks to mitigate concerns about potential threats to identification posed by measurement error and unobservables our evidence indicates that women who do not feel treated with respect and dignity have a higher incentive to migrate abroad the likelihood that these migration intentions are turned into actual preparations however depends on more traditional determinants such as household income network effects and family obligations furthermore we also show that more intense gender imbalances in economic and political opportunities prevent women from actually moving abroad