public employees and public sector reform implementation conventional wisdom says that reforms that aim at improving the productivity of the public sector face opposition from public sector employees and for this reason tend to be poorly implemented these claims are not backed by much hard evidence this paper seeks to fill some of that gap by investigating why an educational reform containing explicit accountability elements is poorly implemented across norwegian municipalities about four years after the reform has passed the parliament the empirical analyses provide evidence that municipalities with a large share of public employees are less likely to implement the reform the relationship seems to be causal a reduced form approach is applied which prevents conclusions about the mechanisms through which the public employees exercise their influence however some preliminary analyses indicate that school leaders hold more negative attitudes towards the reform in municipalities with a large share of public employees potentially indicating that regulatory capture is an issue school leaders tend to sympathize more strongly with teachers in such environments

can new legislation in importing countries represent new barriers to the development of an international ethanol market the use of ethanol as a fuel has been attracting increasing attention in countries that are interested in reducing their dependence on imported oil and lowering their greenhouse gas emissions despite this growing interest the global ethanol market is still incipient because of the small number of producing countries the lack of technical standardization and the existence of tariff and non tariff trade barriers new laws have taken effect in 2010 in the united states and the european union imposing domestic requirements for sustainable production of ethanol although these are generally positive developments they can create greater difficulties for the development of an international ethanol market this work examines the technical barriers posed by these new laws and how they can be resolved under the auspices of the world trade organization in addition this work analyses the brazilian and caribbean cases discussing to what extent these new technical barriers will affect ethanol production and exports arising from these countries

education and invention abstract modern growth theory puts invention on the center stage inventions are created by individuals raising the question of whether we can increase the number of inventors to answer this question we study the causal effect of msc engineering education on invention using data on u s patents finnish inventors and the distance to the nearest technical university as an instrument we find a positive effect of engineering education on the propensity to patent and a negative ols bias our counterfactual calculation suggests that establishing three new technical universities resulted in a 20 increase in the number of uspto patents by finnish inventors

early tracking and the misfortune of being young recent research suggests that the relative age of a student within a grade has a causal effect on educational achievement and that this effect fades with the duration of schooling in this study we estimate the causal relative age effect on track choice in austria a country where students are first tracked in grade 5 at the age of 10 years and again in grade 9 we find a strong positive relative age effect on track choice in grades 5 8 the age effect persists beyond grade 8 for students from less favorable socioeconomic backgrounds and students in urban areas

international trade in biofuels an introduction to the special issue abstract currently many countries are establishing goals for substituting biofuels for fossil fuels these goals usually foresee 5 10 substitution while today s production in most countries is far below 2 evidently many countries will seek to meet their ambitious biofuel targets through imports this global trade in biofuels which is to some extent already taking place will have a major impact not only on other commodity markets like vegetable oils or animal fodder but also on the global land use change and on environmental impacts this special issue focuses on the relation between trading policy making and sustainability impacts of biofuels it demonstrates the strong but complex link between biofuels production and the global food market it unveils policy measures as the main drivers for production and use of biofuels and it analyzes various sustainability indicators and certification schemes for biofuels with respect to minimizing the adverse effects of biofuels while maximizing the benefits of the future use of biofuels

reanalyzing zero returns to education in germany summary pischke and von wachter review of economics and statistics 2008 90 3 592 598 find zero earnings returns to compulsory schooling in the basic school track in germany we reanalyze their study using a different dataset in an extension we use additional instruments which allow estimation of heterogeneous effects for different groups of compliers we can confirm the previous result and also find zero returns for other compliers in higher track schools moreover we do not find a causal effect of schooling on cognitive skills this is in line with a potential reason pischke von wachter 2008 give for their result namely that basic skills are learned earlier in germany and additional years of schooling are no longer effective copyright 2015 john wiley sons ltd

human capital versus sorting the effects of compulsory attendance laws under the educational sorting hypothesis a state compulsory school attendance law will increase the educational attainment of high ability workers who are not directly affected hy the law under the human capital hypothesis such laws affect only those individuals whose hehavior is directly constrained we find that compulsory attendance laws do increase enrollment rates in age groups they do not affect directly thus our results contradict the human capital hypothesis and are consistent with the sorting hypothesis i introduction the last decade has seen considerable debate between supporters of the human capital and sorting models of education the former assert that the effect of education on wages reflects increased productivity the latter maintain that it reflects at least in part correlation between education and unobserved ability workers use education to signal their ability while employers use education to screen workers despite the importance of the debate no fully convincing tests of the hypotheses have been developed in fact many members of the profession maintain at least privately that these hypotheses cannot be tested against each other and that the debate must therefore be relegated to the realm of ideology in this paper we show that the models can be tested against each other by examining the effects of state compulsory school attendance laws we show that under the human capital hypotheis such laws will affect the educational attainment only of those who in the absence of the law would have left school prior to the minimum school leaving age on the other hand under the sorting hypothesis the effects of the law will percolate through the system increasing educational attainment even among workers not directly constrained by the law our results are consistent with the predictions of the sorting model

fuzzy input output model for optimizing eco industrial supply chains under water footprint constraints global water stress is expected to increase due to population growth economic development and climate change because of this trend there is an increased interest in the water intensity of industrial activities conducted via the product supply chain or within specified geographical boundaries or regions both at the enterprise or regulatory level the total water footprint of economic activities should be evaluated in consideration of local water resource consumption virtual water trade and resource availability as individual entities seek to protect their respective interests the challenge is to optimize inter regional trade of goods with the consideration of the interests of participants in the network this work presents a fuzzy inputeoutput model for optimizing supply chains under water footprint constraints two case studies involving tile manufacturing and biofuel production are considered to demonstrate the use of the model

the effect of school quality on educational attainment and wages the paper examines the effects of school pupil teacher ratios and type of school on educational attainment and wages using the british national child development survey ncds the ncds is a panel survey which has followed a cohort of individuals born in march 1958 and has a rich set of background variables recorded throughout the individual s life the results suggest that once we control for ability and family background the pupil teacher ratio has no impact on educational qualifications or on male wages it has an impact on women s wages at the age of 33 particularly those of low ability we also find evidence that those who attend selective schools have better educational outcomes and in the case of men higher wages at the age of 33 the impact is higher for the type of individuals who are less likely not to attend selective schools but for whom a comparison group does exist among those attending

the price precision effect evidence from laboratory and market data we examine two questions does the roundness or precision of prices bias magnitude judgments if so do these biased judgments affect buyer behavior results from five studies suggest that buyers underestimate the magnitudes of precise prices we term this the precision effect the first three studies are laboratory experiments designed to test the existence of the precision effect and examine the underlying psychological processes in study 1 we find that precise prices are judged to be smaller than round prices of similar magnitudes for example participants in this experiment incorrectly judged 395 425 to be smaller than 395 000 in study 2 we show that precision is more likely to affect magnitude judgments under conditions of uncertainty study 3 demonstrates that manipulating prior experience with the pattern of roundness and precision in numbers can moderate the precision effect studies 4 and 5 examine whether the precision effect influences buyers willingness to pay for negotiated purchases e g houses in study 4 we conduct an experiment on a nationally representative sample of homeowners to demonstrate that participants are willing to pay more for houses when the sellers use precise e g 364 578 instead of comparable round e g 365 000 prices in study 5 we analyze data from residential real estate transactions in two separate markets and find that buyers pay higher sale prices when list prices are more precise these empirical results enrich our understanding of the psychological processes that underlie price magnitude judgments and have substantive implications for buyer and seller behavior

the effect of age targeted tax credits on labor force participation of older workers abstract i analyze the effect of income tax policy changes on labor force participation of older workers i exploit two age targeted policy initiatives to promote work at older ages simultaneously implemented in sweden in 2007 an earned income tax credit and a payroll tax credit for workers above age 65 using an age based discontinuity in eligibility criteria i conduct a difference in differences analysis with the reform as an instrument for the net of tax rate i find a participation elasticity with respect to the net of participation tax rate of about 0 22 in the year following the 65th birthday for individuals who were working four years earlier

why the apple doesn t fall far understanding intergenerational transmission of human capital parents with higher education levels have children with higher education levels however is this because parental education actually changes the outcomes of children suggesting an important spillover of education policies or is it merely that more able individuals who have higher education also have more able children this paper proposes to answer this question with a unique dataset from norway using the reform of the education system that was implemented in different municipalities at different times in the 1960s as an instrument for parental education we find little evidence of a causal relationship between parents education and children s education despite significant ols relationships we find 2sls estimates that are consistently lower than the ols estimates with the only statistically significant effect being a positive relationship between mother s education and son s education these findings suggest that the high correlations between parents and children s education are due primarily to family characteristics and inherited ability and not education spillovers

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

can we meet targets for biofuels and renewable energy in transport given the constraints imposed by policy in agriculture and energy abstract the deployment of biofuels is significantly affected by policy in energy and agriculture in the energy arena concerns regarding the sustainability of biofuel systems and their impact on food prices led to a set of sustainability criteria in eu directive 2009 28 ec on renewable energy in addition the 10 biofuels target by 2020 was replaced with a 10 renewable energy in transport target this allows the share of renewable electricity used by electric vehicles to contribute to the mix in achieving the 2020 target furthermore only biofuel systems that effect a 60 reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with the fuel they replace are allowed to contribute to meeting the target in the agricultural arena cross compliance which is part of eu common agricultural policy dictates the allowable ratio of grassland to total agricultural land and has a significant impact on which biofuels may be supported this paper outlines the impact of these policy areas and their implications for the production and use of biofuels in terms of the 2020 target for 10 renewable transport energy focusing on ireland the policies effectively impose constraints on many conventional energy crop biofuels and reinforce the merits of using biomethane a gaseous biofuel the analysis shows that ireland can potentially satisfy 15 of renewable energy in transport by 2020 allowing for double credit for biofuels from residues and ligno cellulosic materials as per directive 2009 28 ec through the use of indigenous biofuels grass biomethane waste and residue derived biofuels electric vehicles and rapeseed biodiesel

gender differences in educational attainment evidence on the role of tracking from a finnish quasi experiment this paper studies the relationship between the timing of tracking of pupils into vocational and academic secondary education and gender differences in educational attainment and income we argue that in a system that streams students into vocational and academic tracks relatively late age 15 16 girls are more likely to choose the academic track than boys because of gender differences in the timing of puberty we exploit the finnish comprehensive school reform of the 1970 s to analyze this hypothesis this reform postponed the tracking of students from the age of 10 11 to 15 16 and was adopted gradually by municipalities so that we can observe members of the same cohorts in both systems we find that the postponement of the tracking age increased gender differences in the probability of choosing the academic secondary education and in the probability of continuing into academic tertiary education the reform had particularily negative effects on boys from non academic family backgrounds finally the reform decreased the gender wage gap in adult income by four percentage points

changes in compulsory schooling education and the distribution of wages in europe using data from 12 european countries and the variation across countries and over time in the changes of minimum school leaving age we study the effects of the quantity of education on the distribution of earnings we find that compulsory school reforms significantly affect educational attainment especially among individuals belonging to the lowest quantiles of the distribution of ability there is also evidence that additional education reduces conditional wage inequality and that education and ability are substitutes in the earnings function

educational reform ability and family background in this paper we evaluate the impact of a major school reform that took place in the 1950s in sweden on educational attainment and earnings the reform which has many common elements with reforms in other european countries including the uk consisted of increasing compulsor schooling imposing a national curriculum and abolishing selection by ability into academic and non academic streams at the age of 12 comprehensive school reform our data combines survey data with administrative sources we find that the reform increased both the educational attainment and the earnings of children whose fathers had just compulsory education however the earnings of those with educated parents declined possibly because of a dilution of quality at the top end of the education levels the overall effect of the reform was however positive

school tracking and intergenerational income mobility evidence from the finnish comprehensive school reform abstract this paper estimates the effect of a major education reform on intergenerational income mobility the finnish comprehensive school reform of 1972 1977 replaced the old two track school system with a uniform nine year comprehensive school and shifted the selection of students to vocational and academic tracks from age 11 to age 16 we estimate the effect of this reform on the intergenerational income elasticity using a representative sample of males born between 1960 and 1966 the identification strategy relies on a differences in differences approach and exploits the fact that the reform was implemented gradually across the country during a six year period the results indicate that the reform reduced the intergenerational income elasticity by 23 from the pre reform elasticity of 0 30 to post reform elasticity of 0 23

european union leadership in biofuels regulation europe as a normative power the rapid emergence of the european union eu as a leader in global environmental politics has led many scholars to argue in favour of the eu being a normative power in international relations this paper critically examines the eu s biofuels policy and evaluates whether its attempts to lead by example and shape international practice in this field could support such arguments europe s biofuel policies are evaluated through a sustainable development lens so as to determine the extent to which it has embraced a holistic approach to sustainability while not dismissing that the identity of the eu is indeed an explanatory factor and that normative intentions may well be regarded as a motivating force this study argues that an interest based perspective on international environmental regulation offers a supplementary view of how an actor s preferences for an international regime are shaped by erecting barriers aimed at shielding its own inefficient domestic biofuels production the eu is in essence placing trade competitiveness and economic growth above environmental protection thus permitting sustainability concerns to be addressed only in part

integrated assessment of sustainability trade offs and pathways for global bioenergy production framing a novel hybrid approach abstract current controversies and debates on bioenergy production in the areas of greenhouse gases emission reduction food and energy security social exclusion and welfare erosion and ecosystem deterioration attest to the challenges which the bioenergy sector has to overcome to achieve its global production potentials because it is yet an evolving sector the sustainability of bioenergy production in different regions is very elusive experiences show that bioenergy policies in one region can have impacts not only on its own but also on other regions social economic and ecological sustainability it is thus important to assess development pathways for bioenergy to exploit the potential benefits and forestall any unnecessary costs this paper frames a novel hybrid approach for assessing bioenergy potentials for regions with diverging economic social and ecological systems the approach is based on a conceptual framework that takes into account trade offs decisions on sustainability goals and production options in the assessment of bioenergy pathways it combines different empirical techniques for the systematic investigation of trade offs and pathways including fuzzy logic conjoint logit and path analyses to show the relevance and utility of these techniques for the integrated assessment of trade offs and pathways in bioenergy development we illustrated their application using results and data from previous related studies

priceless the nonpecuniary benefits of schooling copyright 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 by the american economic association permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of american economic association publications for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not distributed for profit or direct commercial advantage and that copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation including the name of the author copyrights for components of this work owned by others than aea must be honored abstracting with credit is permitted the author has the right to republish post on servers redistribute to lists and use any component of this work in other works for others to do so requires prior specific permission and or a fee permissions may be requested from the american economic association administrative office by going to the contact us form and choosing copyright permissions request from the menu copyright 2016 aea

effect of secondary school fees on educational attainment in this study the heterogeneity of the fee abolition process in west german secondary schools is used to identify the effect of school fees on educational attainment and to obtain an estimate of the price elasticity of upper secondary education the analysis is based on representative individual level data from three annual surveys of the german mikrozensus while coefficients cannot be estimated precisely the results suggest that on average upper secondary school attainment increased by at least 8 percent in response to the fee abolition the educational attainment of females appears to be more price sensitive than that of males