wheat from chaff meta analysis as quantitative literature review abstract this paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research meta regression analysis or mra economics is theory driven yet we must learn empirically if economics is to advance mra offers a more objective statistical method to summarize our empirical knowledge and to explain the wide study to study variation in economic research mra is used to assess the evidence for ricardian equivalence and its findings are contrasted to those of conventional narrative review furthermore mra establishes a platform from which to distinguish genuine empirical effect from the exploitable specification error that infests applied econometrics

community size and network closure large community size is often negatively correlated with prosocial behaviors such as formal volunteering working on public projects and informal help to friends and strangers robert d putnam 2000 119 206 this may be because people who reside in large communities simply spend less time socializing with each other as a result people living in large cities have on average fewer friends and their social networks support less cooperation a complementary channel which has received less attention in the literature is that community size may affect outcomes by changing other aspects of the network structure specifically even holding fixed the number of friends we expect social networks in small communities to exhibit greater network closure i e be more interconnected the intuition is straightforward in small communities the pool of potential friends is limited which increases the extent to which the network neighborhoods of two friends are likely to overlap james s coleman 1990 suggested that variation in network closure can affect outcomes in particular he argued that networks with higher closure generate high trust between friends which facilitates cooperation and improves welfare the logic is that networks with high closure allow for greater social sanctions between

the consequences of doubling the minimum wage the case of indonesia minimum wages in indonesia were tripled in nominal terms and doubled in real terms in the first half of the 1990s the author evaluates the effects of this hike on wage earnings wage employment and investment after describing indonesia s minimum wage policy and surveying the literature on the effects of minimum wages the author applies relatively simple statistical tools to individual and aggregate data he visually inspects the wage distribution for full time laborers and employees to assess the extent of compliance with minimum wages he uses regression analysis involving minimalist specifications and data aggregated by province to estimate the elasticity of wage earnings wage employment and investment with respect to the minimum wage a wide dispersion in the ratio of minimum wages to labor productivity across the 27 indonesian provinces can be used to identify the effects of the minimum wage the results suggest that minimum wages have a moderate effect on outcomes in indonesia s labor market taken at face value these results imply that doubling the minimum wage led to a 10 percent increase in average wages a 2 percent decrease in wage employment and a 5 percent decrease in investment the disemployment effect appears to be considerable in small firms but employment may actually increase in large firms

law enforcement and transition abstract we present a simple model to analyze law enforcement problems in transition economies law enforcement implies coordination problems and multiplicity of equilibria due to a law abidance and a fiscal externality we analyze two institutional mechanisms for solving the coordination problem a first mechanism which we call dualism follows the scenario of chinese transition where the government keeps direct control over economic resources and where a liberalized non state sector follows market rules the second mechanism we put forward is accession to the european union we show that accession to the european union even without external borrowing provides a mechanism to eliminate the bad equilibrium provided the accessing country is small enough relative to the european union interestingly we show that accession without conditionality is better than with conditionality because conditionality creates a coordination problem of its own that partly annihilates the positive effects of expected accession

class size education and wages we use micro data for england and wales to examine the effects of class size on the decision to stay on in full time schooling at 16 and on wages later in life we find that class size has a sizeable and significant effect on the decision to stay on this finding is very robust wage equations show the effect of staying on is significantly positive for wages combining this with the effect of class size on the staying on decision reveals that class size significantly affects future wages reduced form models lead to much less accurate and insignificant estimates

using maimonides rule to estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement the twelfth century rabbinic scholar maimonides proposed a maximum class size of 40 this same maximum induces a nonlinear and nonmonotonic relationship between grade enrollment and class size in israeli public schools today maimonides rule of 40 is used here to construct instrumental variables estimates of effects of class size on test scores the resulting identiecation strategy can be viewed as an application of donald campbell s regression discontinuity design to the class size question the estimates show that reducing class size induces a signiecant and substantial increase in test scores for fourth and efth graders although not for third graders when asked about their views on class size in surveys parents and teachers generally report that they prefer smaller classes this may be because those involved with teaching believe that smaller classes promote student learning or simply because smaller classes offer a more pleasant environment for the pupils and teachers who are in them mueller chase and walden 1988 social scientists and school administrators also have a longstanding interest in the class size question class size is often thought to be easier to manipulate than other school inputs and it is a variable at the heart of policy debates on school quality and the allocation of school resources in many countries see e g robinson 1990 for the united states ofsted 1995 for the united kingdom and moshel ravid 1995 for israel this broad interest in the consequences of changing class size

greek membership and academic performance evidence from student level data abstractcompared to other inputs of the education production function less is known about the effect of social and non classroom choices this study examines whether joining fraternities and sororities improves academic performance in order to account for the self selection bias of greek membership i exploit plausibly exogenous cross class variation in greek student composition at the course instructor level my estimate shows that a 10 percentage point increase in greek student composition translates to a 0 02 standard deviation increase in course grade for greek students relative to non greek students i further find that this effect is driven largely by low achieving and middle achieving white greek members

the impact of minimum wages on employment in a low income country a quasi natural experiment in indonesia the extensive literature on the employment impact of minimum wages has focused heavily on industrialized nations and very little on the developing world despite the importance of minimum wages in many low income countries one such country indo nesia was the setting for an unusual quasi natural experiment not only did minimum wages in indonesia increase sharply between 1990 and 1996 but the resultant increment in average wages varied markedly across different areas in greater jakarta the authors use household level labor market data to determine the extent of compliance with the legislation then estimate the employment impact in the clothing textiles footwear and leather industries based on a census of all large and medium sized establishments the evidence suggests that there was no negative employment impact for large establish ments either foreign or domestic but that workers in smaller domestic establishments may have suffered job losses as a result of minimum wage increases

home versus school learning a new approach to estimating the effect of class size on achievement i estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement using that schools are only in session during the school year and out of session during the summer this seasonal feature of the schooling system makes it possible to control for unobservable pupil characteristics affecting both the level and change in achievement using swedish data i find that smaller classes generate higher achievement a comparison with the results from applying the same data to the widely used value added model is also made

measuring investment in education historic debates about the measurement of capital are even more complicated in the case of education and human capital as extensive research demonstrates education resources are not consistently related to student performance in existing elementary and secondary schools this inefficiency in public schools implies that spending and resource measures do not accurately capture variations in school quality this finding then has clear implications for both education policy and economic research because school inputs are poor policy instruments an alternative policy focus that appears much more productive is performance incentives related to student achievement

fiscal policy in real time in this paper i estimate the ex ante or intentional cyclical stance of fiscal policy in oecd countries i use the fiscal plans reported at the time of budgeting together with other information available to fiscal policy makers in real time indeed fiscal plans might be significantly different from ex post outcomes because governments do not have complete control over their implementation which is influenced by several exogenous factors when fiscal policy rules are estimated using real time data i show in this paper that oecd countries have often planned a counter cyclical fiscal stance especially during economic expansions this contrasts with conventional findings based on actual data which tend to point towards a cyclicality or pro cyclicality forecast errors for the government structural balance and the output gap play a central role in explaining the differences between estimates based on ex ante and ex post data

social spillovers in the classroom identification estimation and policy analysis i present a method to jointly estimate social spillovers in the classroom and the distributions of teacher and student effects this method is based on the covariance and higher order moments restrictions of the test scores requiring the random assignment of teachers and students to classrooms using the tennessee project star dataset i estimate sizeable spillovers in kindergarten classrooms and departures from normality of the teacher and student ability distributions the estimates also show that reducing class size has a positive effect on mean performance but it increases the inequality based on these estimates i perform several input neutral policy counterfactuals involving teachers and students assignment rules and changing the distribution of class sizes for the latter i derive an optimal class size distribution rule which increases mean test scores and reduces the overall variance

the impact of minimum wages in mexico and colombia there are diverging views about how minimum wages affect labor markets in developing countries advocates of minimum wages hold that they redistribute resources in a welfare enhancing way and can thus reduce poverty improve productivity and foster growth opponents on the other hand contend that minimum wage interventions result in a misallocation of labor and lead to depressed wages in the very sectors the rural and informal urban sectors where most of the poor are found with the effect of wasting resources and reducing the growth rate data from colombia and mexico for the 1980s provide an opportunity to evaluate the impact of minimum wages in mexico in the 1980s the minimum wage fell in real terms roughly 45 percent by 1990 mexico s minimum wage was about 13 percent of the average unskilled manufacturing wage during the same period the minimum wage in colombia increased at nearly the same rate reaching roughly 53 percent of the average unskilled wage the author charts how the mandated minimum wage affected the demand for skilled and unskilled labor in both countries during that decade findings are as follows in mexico minimum wages have had virtually no effect on wages or employment in the formal sector the main reason the minimum wage is not an effective wage for most firms or workers in the informal sector in turn there is considerable noncompliance with the mandated minimum wage especially among part time and female workers as a result significant numbers of workers are paid at or below minimum wages in colombia minimum wages have a much stronger impact on wages judging from their proximity to the average wage and both cross section and time series estimates the estimates imply that the elasticity of low paid unskilled employment with respect to minimum wages is in the range of 2 to 12 percent

fiscal policy and monetary integration in europe fiscal policy economists policy makers and the media often argue that the maastricht treaty and the stability and growth pact make it difficult for governments of emu countries to stabilize their economies with appropriate fiscal policy and to provide adequate public investment our empirical analysis offers little support to this view discretionary budget deficits have actually become more counter cyclical in emu countries after the maastricht treaty as well as in the other eu and non eu industrialized countries we study and while public investment has declined recently in emu countries a similar tendency is apparent in other countries and started well before the maastricht treaty was signed jordi gali and roberto perotti

planning to cheat eu fiscal policy in real time using real time data from europe s stability and convergence programs we explore how fiscal plans and their implementation in the eu are determined we find that 1 implemented budgetary adjustment falls systematically short of planned adjustment and this shortfall increases with the projection horizon 2 variability in the eventual fiscal outcomes is dominated by the implementation errors 3 there is a limited role for traditional political variables 4 stock flow adjustments are more important when plans are more ambitious and 5 most importantly both the ambition in fiscal plans and their implementation benefit from stronger national fiscal institutions we emphasize also the importance of credible plans for the eventual fiscal outcomes roel beetsma massimo giuliodori and peter wierts

fiscal rules discretionary fiscal policy and macroeconomic stability an empirical assessment for oecd countries does aggressive use of discretionary fiscal policy induce macroeconomic instability in terms of higher output and inflation volatility three main conclusions arise from our cross section and panel analysis for a sample of 20 oecd countries first discretionary fiscal policy has a significant and sizeable effect on volatility of gdp per capita and all of its components second there is no direct effect on inflation volatility since output volatility is an important determinant of inflation volatility discretionary fiscal policy indirectly exacerbates inflation volatility these results turn out robust with respect to alternative fiscal policy measures and endogeneity concerns finally many of the fiscal rules introduced since 1990 appear to have reduced the use of discretionary fiscal policy

monetary policy rules based on real time data this paper examines the magnitude of informational problems associated with the implementation and interpretation of simple monetary policy rules using taylor s rule as an example i demonstrate that real time policy recommendations differ considerably from those obtained with ex post revised data further estimated policy reaction functions based on ex post revised data provide misleading descriptions of historical policy and obscure the behavior suggested by information available to the federal reserve in real time these results indicate that reliance on the information actually available to policy makers in real time is essential for the analysis of monetary policy rules

causal effects in education abstract in recent years a wave of new studies on the effects of educational interventions on student performance has emerged the realization that inputs in the education process are endogenous is important for the validity of traditional findings because of ignoring endogeneity bias all traditional estimates might be wrong recent studies exploit exogenous variation in interventions in education produced by controlled or natural experiments results generated by this methodological innovation differ substantially from the traditional findings this article reviews this new literature illustrates new methods for identifying causal effects of interventions in education and compares the findings with the traditional literature

long term impacts of class size in compulsory school how does class size in compulsory school affect people s long run education and earnings we use maximum class size rules and norwegian administrative registries allowing us to observe outcomes up to age 48 we do not find any indication of beneficial effects of class size reduction in compulsory school for a one person reduction in class size we reject effects on income as small as 0 12 percent in primary school and 0 15 percent in middle school population differences in parental background school size or competitive pressure do not appear to reconcile our findings with previous studies

fiscal policy in central and eastern europe with real time data cyclicality inertia and the role of eu accession this article evaluates the cyclicality inertia and effect of eu accession on fiscal policy in central and eastern europe cee using a real time dataset budget balances are found to react in a stabilizing way to economic activity every extra percentage point of economic growth is associated with an improvement in the budget balance of 0 3 percentage points of gross domestic product gdp and there is no evidence of an asymmetric reaction to the cycle balances are much less inert than is typically found in western europe however there is clear evidence of a fiscal loosening in the run up to eu accession this began in 1999 in larger central european countries often identified as front runners the other seven began loosening in 2001 after the nice treaty was agreed for both sets of countries this loosening cumulatively amounts to some 3 of gdp

a positive theory of fiscal deficits and government debt this paper considers an economy in which policymakers with different preferences alternate in office as a result of elections government debt is used strategically by each policymaker to influence the choices of his successors if different policymakers disagree about the desired composition of government spending between two public goods the economy exhibits a deficits bias that is debt accumulation is higher than it would be with a social planner the equilibrium level of debt is larger the larger is the degree of polarization between alternating governments and the less likely it is that the current government will be re elected

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

public schooling college subsidies and growth abstract how does the mix of public education expenditures across primary and secondary k 12 education and post secondary college education influence economic growth to address this i build an overlapping generations endogenous growth model human capital is accumulated through compulsory k 12 education and through optional college education government uses tax revenue to provide quality in k 12 schooling and to subsidize college tuition when total expenditures are small all funds should provide k 12 quality when expenditures are above a critical value a positive share should subsidize tuition the share should increase with total expenditures and with the degree of complementarity of human capital accumulated through the two types of education also increased education spending is more likely to increase growth when a larger share subsidizes tuition

the impact of expenditure rules on budgetary discipline over the cycle we study the impact of expenditure rules on the propensity for governments to deviate from their expenditure plans in response to surprising cyclical developments theoretical considerations suggest that due to political fragmentation in the budgetary process expenditure policy might be prone to a procyclical bias however this tendency may be mitigated by strictly enforced expenditure rules these hypotheses are tested against data from a panel of eu member states our key findings are that 1 deviations between actual and planned government expenditure tend to be positively related to output gap surprises and 2 expenditure rules reduce this procyclical bias these results are particularly pronounced when the analysis is confined to spending items with a high degree of budgetary flexibility

real time data and fiscal policy analysis a survey of the literature abstractthis paper surveys the empirical research on scal policy analysis based on real timedata this literature can be broadly divided in three groups that focus on 1 the statisticalproperties of revisions in scal data 2 the political and institutional determinants of scaldata revisions and of one year ahead projection errors by governments and 3 the reactionof scal policies to the business cycle it emerges that rst scal data revisions are largeand initial releases are biased estimates of nal values second the presence of strong scalrules and institutions leads to relatively more accurate releases of scal data and smalldeviations of scal outcomes from government plans third the cyclical stance of scalpolicies is estimated to be more counter cyclical when real time data are used instead ofex post data finally more work is needed for the development of real time datasets for scalpolicy analysis in particular a comprehensive real time dataset including scal variablesfor industrialized and possibly developing countries published and maintained by centralbanks or other institutions is still missing

quasi experimental estimates of the effect of class size on achievement in norway using a comprehensive norwegian administrative database we exploit independent quasi experimental methods to estimate the effect of class size on student achievement at the end of lower secondary school identification based on maximum class size rules and population variation and variations on these methods give very similar estimates we cannot reject that the class size effect is equal to zero and can rule out effects as small as 1 5 percent of a standard deviation for a one student change in class size during three consecutive years

experimental estimates of education production functions this paper analyzes data on 11 600 students and their teachers who were randomly assigned to different size classes from kindergarten through third grade statistical methods are used to adjust for nonrandom attrition and transitions between classes the main conclusions are 1 on average performance on standardized tests increases by four percentile points the first year students attend small classes 2 the test score advantage of students in small classes expands by about one percentile point per year in subsequent years 3 teacher aides and measured teacher characteristics have little effect 4 class size has a larger effect for minority students and those on free lunch 5 hawthorne effects were unlikely

does the size of the legislature affect the size of government evidence from two natural experiments this paper makes use of regression discontinuity designs to estimate the effect of the number of legislators on the size of government the results indicate a negative effect i e the larger the size of the legislature the smaller is the size of government this runs counter to conventional wisdom one potential explanation is that more legislators can better control a budget maximizing bureaucracy i present evidence that is consistent with the proposed mechanism

estimation of a fiscal policy rule for emu countries 1984 2005 the primary objective of this article is to estimate a fiscal policy rule for each of the emu member states from 1984 to 2005 in order to know if there has been a systematic response of the cyclically adjusted primary balance to output gap and debt level variations also we aim to discover whether the change in the fiscal framework which took place after 1992 has had a substantial impact on the fiscal policy applied the principal novelty is that the estimation is performed simultaneously by means of a seemingly unrelated regression estimator model we are thus able to obtain different coefficients for each country while developing possible correlations between national fiscal policies which would reveal the existence of common factors the results provide clear evidence of a structural break in the rule after the introduction of the new fiscal regulations and as the hypothesis of equality in the national coefficients of the rule is clearly rejected reveal a need to consider specific national factors

the cyclical behaviour of fiscal policy evidence from the oecd this paper addresses the topic of cyclicality in scal policy in particular we show that the level of cyclicality varies across spending categories and across oecd countries in line with leading theories of scal cyclicality we show that countries with volatile output and dispersed political power are the most likely to run procyclical scal policies wage government consumption is highlighted as the most important channel by which these variables affect scal cyclicality

the regulation of labor author s botero juan djankov simeon la porta rafael lopez de silanes florencio shleifer andrei abstract we investigate the regulation of labor markets through employment collective relations and social security laws in 85 countries we find that the political power of the left is associated with more stringent labor regulations and more generous social security systems and that socialist french and scandinavian legal origin countries have sharply higher levels of labor regulation than do common law countries however the effects of legal origins are larger and explain more of the variation in regulations than those of politics heavier regulation of labor is associated with lower labor force participation and higher unemployment especially of the young these results are most naturally consistent with legal theories according to which countries have pervasive regulaory styles inherited from the transplantation of legal systems

fiscal rules inertia and discretionary fiscal policy in current practice changes in the cyclically adjusted budget balance cab are interpreted as reflecting the effort of discretionary fiscal policy this paper shows that such an interpretation is not a sufficiently accurate description of the behaviour of fiscal policy as in some cases it may conceal an important deficit bias specifically as growth projections are an important building block of budgetary plans systematic optimism in forecasting growth coupled with pervasive lags and inertia in the implementation phase of the budget will result in a fiscal expansion compared to plans even in the absence of discretionary measures in order to track down this kind of passive behaviour in the light of growth surprises or sanguine growth assumptions the traditional reading of the cab needs to be adjusted this is achieved by relaxing the benchmark assumption according to which under unchanged fiscal policy the deficit to gdp ratio is invariant to growth an empirical application to public finance

identifying discretionary fiscal policy reactions with real time data we propose a method of identifying discretionary fiscal policy reactions using real time data automatic stabilizers should depend on true gdp while discretionary fiscal policy is contingent on the information that policy makers have in real time we can compute a real time measurement error by comparing the first release of gdp data with later revisions discretionary fiscal policy is influenced by this measurement error whereas automatic fiscal policy is not we use this identification approach to test the central identifying assumption of blanchard and perotti s 2002 seminal structural vector autoregression var according to this assumption fiscal policy makers do not react to gdp developments contemporaneously in a discretionary fashion we find that government expenditure is adjusted upward if gdp growth in real time is lower than true gdp this suggests that fiscal policy makers use short term funds to buy goods and services in response to their perception of gdp dynamics

school characteristics and teacher turnover assessing the role of preferences and opportunities job characteristics can affect worker turnover through their effect on utility and through their effect on outside job opportunities the aim of this study is to identify and estimate the roles of these two channels separately our method exploits information on job changes and relies on an augmented sample selection correction to illustrate our approach we use an exhaustive register of dutch primary school teachers and show a detailed picture of preferences for school characteristics we also find that the dependence between current and outside job attributes can affect turnover and thus the allocation of teachers across schools

intra school competition and student achievement within the economics of education literature numerous studies have investigated the relationship between educational market competition and educational achievement educational market competition has been defined as either the availability of vouchers within a community or the number of schools or school districts within the relevant market structure while these studies have shown that increases in inter district competition result in increased student achievement no studies to our knowledge have yet investigated the effect of intra school competition on student achievement within this study a measure of intra school competition is developed and the findings indicate that increased intra school competition leads to increased student achievement

immigrating to opportunity estimating the effect of school quality using a natural experiment on ethiopians in israel in may 1991 fifteen thousand ethiopian jews were brought to israel in an overnight airlift and sorted in a haphazard and essentially random fashion to absorption centers across the country this quasi random assignment produced a natural experiment whereby the initial schooling environment of ethiopian children can be considered exogenous to their family background and parental decisions we examine the extent to which the initial elementary school environment affected the high school outcomes of ethiopian children using administrative panel data on the educational career of each child in israel through much of the 1990s the results show that the early schooling environment has an important effect on high school dropout rates repetition rates and the passing rate on matriculation exams necessary to enter college the results are robust to using alternative measures of the schooling environment and to the inclusion of community fixed effects which suggests that aspects of the elementary school itself are important for high school success

the dynamics of minimum wage policy in economic development a multiple time series approach minimum wage legislation is now common in both developed and developing countries however as s watanabe points out in these two groups of countries minimum wage legislation has different objectives for developed countries minimum wages provide a socially acceptable standard of living for marginal workers in the labor force these countries often set the minimum at 40 50 of average wages in contrast developing countries use minimum wages to provide an income base for broad sectors of the population to reduce income inequality in these countries the minimum often is 70 90 of average wages it has also been pointed out that due to lack of enforcement minimum wage legislation in less developed countries has not fundamentally affected wages 2 only in the modern sector of the economy is the minimum enforced usually with the help of trade union supervision the less developed countries simply cannot afford the administrative machinery necessary to enforce minimum wage legislation furthermore governments often are unwilling to enforce the minimum wage because they wish to avoid its possible disemployment consequences one exception to the prevailing view that minimum wage legislation does not affect large sectors of the population in developing countries is the seminal work of l reynolds and p gregory 3 they studied the puerto rican experience with minimum wages during the early stages of rapid industrialization puerto rico s particular politicaleconomic relationship with the united states prevents it from being a typical developing country but the puerto rican case is especially important because compared to other countries minimum wage legislation is enforced more effectively has been in effect longer and has

the impact of changes in job security regulations in india and zimbabwe employment laws in india and zimbabwe require employers to obtain permission from the government to retrench or lay off workers the effect of these laws on the demand for employees in 64 manufacturing industries is examined using time series data little evidence is found indicating slower adjustments in employment levels and hence retardation in any structural adjustment following the new laws however in both countries a substantial decline in the demand for employees other things equal followed the new legislation in zimbabwe it is difficult to be precise about a causal connection between the drop in the demand for labor allowing for concurrent increased wages and the new legislation because enactment occurred simultaneously with independence however the current economic climate induced high levels of investment in capital but not investments in long term commitments to employees but in india further evidence supports a causal connection larger establishments covered by the job security regulations tended to experience a decline in the demand for labor while smaller uncovered enterprises in the same industries did not moreover the decline in demand for employees across industries in india was larger where the private sector predominates where larger establishments covered by the new laws are important and where a smaller proportion of employees are union members thus in both countries the policy implemented to protect jobs may bave resulted infarfewerjobs upon achieving independence in 1980 the government of zimbabwe passed a new employment act requiring employers to obtain permission from the ministry of labor to fire or lay off workers comparable regulations were imposed in india by the industrial disputes amendment act of 1976 requiring that written permission be obtained normally from the relevant state government either to close a plant or to retrench workers the immediate goal of these items of legislation was to protect the livelihood of workers and to maintain jobs any addition to economic security in the lives of workers is clearly a laudable goal in its own right but the question addressed in this article is whether these particular job security regulations have had undesirable side effects which may even have thwarted the original goals of the legislation india and zimbabwe are

identity and schooling some lessons for the economics of education abstract this review culls noneconomic literature on education by sociologists anthropologists and practitioners to present a new economic theory of students and schools this theory elaborates two themes that have eluded economic analysis first is the student as decision maker whose primary motivation is her identity second is a conception of the school as a social institution this framework suggests a new perspective on questions such as resource allocation and school reform it explains why some educational policies succeed and others fail we show how sociological variables may affect outcomes and suggest ways economists can incorporate them into theoretical and empirical research

the impact of labor market regulation on employment in low income countries a meta analysis controversy over labor market policy often centers on achieving a balance between preventing worker exploitation and avoiding loss of productivity or employment through excessive regulation although the literature documenting the impact of labor market regulation on employment is extensive there is a dearth of evidence on the impact of such policies in low income countries lics since it is easier for workers especially women to slip into the informal sector in lics regulations are likely to have stronger impacts on formal employment in these countries but lower impacts on unemployment we systematically reviewed available research from countries that are or were until recently lics most studies document that more stringent labor regulations are associated with lower formal sector employment and higher informal sector employment we also conducted a metaregression analysis of the impact of minimum wages on formal and informal employment after controlling for publication bias higher minimum wages are associated with lower formal employment and a higher share of informal workers

does additional spending help urban schools an evaluation using boundary discontinuities this study exploits spatial anomalies in school funding policy in england to provide new evidence on the impact of resources on student achievement in urban areas anomalies arise because the funding allocated to local education authorities lea depends through a funding formula on the additional educational needs of its population and prices in the district however the money each school receives from its lea is not necessarily related to the school s own specific local conditions and constraints this implies that neighbouring schools with similar intakes operating in the same labour market facing similar prices but in different leas can receive very different incomes we find that these funding disparities give rise to sizeable differences in pupil attainment in national tests at the end of primary school showing that school resources have an important role to play in improving educational attainment especially for lower socio economic groups the design is geographical boundary discontinuity design which compares neighbouring schools matched on a proxy for additional educational needs of its students free school meal entitlement fsm in adjacent districts the key identification requirement is one of conditional ignorability of the level of lea grant where conditioning is on geographical location of schools and their proportion of fsm children

the effects of class size on student achievement new evidence from population variation abstract i identify the effects of class size on student achievement using longitudinal variation in the population associated with each grade in 649 elementary schools i use variation in class size driven by idiosyncratic variation in the population i also use discrete jumps in class size that occur when a small change in enrollment triggers a maximum or minimum class size rule the estimates indicate that class size does not have a statistically significant effect on student achievement i rule out even modest effects 2 to 4 percent of a standard deviation in scores for a 10 percent reduction in class size

public funding for startups in argentina an impact evaluation a broad literature has found that the misallocation of entrepreneurial talent has strong effects on productivity to investigate whether the government can improve entrepreneurial activity we analyze a policy aimed at promoting innovative startups through the provision of funding and technical assistance to potential entrepreneurs in buenos aires argentina we conduct a survey and use regression discontinuity methods to identify the effects of the policy we find significant effects on enterprise creation and survival as well as on employment overall we show that small scale public policy can help entrepreneurs overcome a wide variety of barriers to firm entry and improve the allocation of their entrepreneurial talent