nation building through compulsory schooling during the age of mass migration why did america introduce compulsory schooling laws at a time when financial investments in education and voluntary school attendance were high we provide qualitative and quantitative evidence that states adopted compulsory schooling laws as a nation building tool to instil civic values to the culturally diverse migrants during the age of mass migration between 1850 and 1914 we show the adoption of compulsory schooling laws occurred significantly earlier in states that hosted european migrants with lower exposure to civic values in their home countries using cross county data we show that these migrants had significantly lower demand for american schooling pre compulsion

education and propaganda tradeoffs to public education provision in nondemocracies abstract nondemocratic regimes face a tradeoff when investing in public education education promotes human capital acquisition expanding the tax base yet it also enhances political sophistication and participation at a cost to nondemocratic regimes to relax this tradeoff a regime can disseminate propaganda through its education system i show that even bayesian citizens can be influenced by propaganda by deterring political opposition propaganda can induce nondemocracies to invest in education when they otherwise would not improving social welfare when propaganda is too strong however it can generate a backlash using cross country and survey data i find evidence consistent with the predictions

islamic rule and the empowerment of the poor and pious does islamic political control affect women s empowerment several countries have recently experienced islamic parties coming to power through democratic elections due to strong support among religious conservatives constituencies with islamic rule often tend to exhibit poor women s rights whether this reflects a causal relationship or a spurious one has so far gone unexplored i provide the first piece of evidence using a new and unique data set of turkish municipalities in 1994 an islamic party won multiple municipal mayor seats across the country using a regression discontinuity rd design i compare municipalities where this islamic party barely won or lost elections despite negative raw correlations the rd results reveal that over a period of six years islamic rule increased female secular high school education corresponding effects for men are systematically smaller and less precise in the longer run the effect on female education remained persistent up to 17 years after and also reduced adolescent marriages an analysis of long run political effects of islamic rule shows increased female political participation and an overall decrease in islamic political preferences the results are consistent with an explanation that emphasizes the islamic party s effectiveness in overcoming barriers to female entry for the poor and pious

education as liberation this paper studies the political and social impacts of increased education by utilizing a randomized girls merit scholarship programme in kenya that raised test scores and secondary schooling consistent with the view that education empowers the disadvantaged to challenge authority we find that the programme reduced the acceptance of domestic violence and political authority young women in programme schools also increased their objective political knowledge we find that this rejection of the status quo did not translate into greater perceived political efficacy community participation or voting intentions instead there is suggestive evidence that the perceived legitimacy of political violence increased

oligarchy democracy inequality and growth abstract this paper analyses the dynamics of inequality democratization and economic development in a political economy model of growth where education is both the engine of growth and a determinant of political participation in a context with imperfect capital markets we investigate the incentives for an educated oligarchy to subsidize the poor s education and to initiate a democratic transition we characterize the equilibrium patterns of political institutions income distribution and growth as a function of the initial income and inequalities in particular we identify circumstances under which the elite promotes the endogenous emergence of a middle class for purely political economy reasons a simple linear infinite horizon framework is then presented in this setting we discuss the importance of historical dependence for long run social stratification and redistribution

are there civic returns to education abstract the hypothesized effects of educational attainment on adult civic engagement and attitudes provide some of the most important justifications for government intervention in the market for education in this study i present evidence on whether these externalities exist i assess and implement two strategies for identifying the effects of educational attainment one is based on the availability of junior and community colleges the other on changes in teen exposure to child labor laws the results suggest that educational attainment has large and statistically significant effects on subsequent voter participation and support for free speech i also find that additional schooling appears to increase the quality of civic knowledge as measured by the frequency of newspaper readership

taxation depletion and welfare a simulation study of the u s petroleum resource abstract exhaustible resources in the united states are subject to taxes on property value production and corporate income as applied in practice each tax can cause high grading the elimination of incentives to explore develop and produce marginal resources and each can tilt the time path of production toward the present or the future the potential for such tax induced distortions has been shown in the theoretical literature due to the dynamic nature of resource exploitation and the resulting complexity of models developed to study it however purely theoretical exercises have been unable to provide detailed results of a sort that could help guide tax policy the present paper develops a simulation model of the u s petroleum resource and uses it to study the effects of taxation on exploration and production the model is partial equilibrium in scope and views the industry as a present value maximizing representative firm given expectations on the future time path of price and a function that relates reserve additions to exploratory effort the industry chooses time paths for exploration and production parameters of relevant functions are estimated with data for u s petroleum operations in the onshore region of the lower 48 states the simulated outcomes indicate that property and production severance taxes cause substantial deadweight losses a tax on corporate income from extraction imposes a very small deadweight loss and the property tax significantly biases utilization of the resource away from the future and toward the present

does education improve citizenship evidence from the united states and the united kingdom abstract many studies document an association between schooling and civic participation but none credibly investigate causal links we explore the effect of extra schooling induced through compulsory schooling laws on the likelihood of becoming politically involved in the united states and the united kingdom we find that educational attainment is related to several measures of political interest and involvement in both countries we find a strong and robust relationship between education and voting for the united states but not for the united kingdom our us results approach the uk findings when conditioning on registration possibly indicating that registration rules present a barrier to participation

das human kapital a theory of the demise of the class structure this paper suggests that the demise of the capitalists workers class structure was a socio economic transformation orchestrated by the capitalists in reaction to the increasing importance of human capital in sustaining their profit rates physical capital accumulation in the process of industrialization enhanced the importance of human capital in production and generated incentives for capitalists to support the provision of public education for the masses triggering the demise of the existing class structure the implications of the theory are consistent with the voting patterns on england s education reform of 1902

on the distribution of education and democracy this paper empirically analyzes the influence of education on democracy by controlling for unobservable heterogeneity and by taking into account the persistency of some of the variables the most novel finding is that an increase in the education attained by the majority of the population is what matters for the implementation and sustainability of democracy rather than the average years of schooling we show this result is robust to issues pertaining omitted variables outliers sample selection or a narrow definition of the variables used to measure democracy

long lasting effects of socialist education abstract political regimes influence the content of education and criteria used to select and evaluate students we study the impact of a socialist education on the likelihood of obtaining a college degree and on several labor market outcomes by exploiting the reorganization of the school system in east germany after reunification our identification strategy uses cutoff birth dates for school enrollment that lead to variation in the length of exposure to the socialist education system within the same birth cohort an additional year of socialist education decreases the probability of obtaining a college degree and affects longer term labor market outcomes for men

education social cohesion and economic growth analysis of the contribution of education to growth through its role in promoting a common culture indicates that when different cultural groups separately determine the social content of their school curricula excessive polarization can result with less than optimal growth the optimal trajectory involves a gradual reciprocal convergence of school curricula towards the middle ground this may be difficult to implement in a political context in which all agents are identified with one group or another when curricula are determined by legislative bargaining centralization of schooling may result in overly rapid homogenization in some cases and perhaps surprisingly excessive polarization in others this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

determinants of democracy a panel study of over 100 countries from 1960 to 1995 finds that improvements in the standard of living predict increase in democracy as measured by a subjective indicator of electoral rights the propensity for democracy rises with per capita gdp primary schooling and a smaller gap between male and female primary attainment for a given standard of living democaracy tends to fall with urbnization and with a greater reliance on natrual resources democracy has little relation to country size but rises with the middle class share of income the apparently strong relation of democracy to colonial heritage mostly disappears when the economic variables are held constant similarly the allowance for these economic variables weakens the interplay between democracy and religious affiliation however negative effects from muslim and non religious affiliations remain intact

to segregate or to integrate education politics and democracy how is the quality of public education affected by the presence of private schools for the rich theory and evidence suggest that the link depends crucially on the political system we develop a theory that integrates private education and fertility decisions with voting on public schooling expenditures we find that the presence of a large private education sector benefits public schools in a broad based democracy where politicians are responsive to low income families but crowds out public education spending in a society that is politically dominated by the rich the main predictions of the theory are consistent with state level data and micro data from the u s as well as cross country evidence from the programme for international student assessment study

from education to democracy the conventional wisdom views high levels of education as a prerequisite for democracy this paper shows that existing evidence for this view is based on crosssectional correlations which disappear once we look at within country variation in other words there is no evidence that countries that increase their education are more likely to become democratic

schooling political participation and the economy abstract we investigate how the link between individual schooling and political participation is affected by country characteristics using individual survey data we find that political participation is more responsive to schooling in land abundant countries and less responsive in human capital abundant countries even while controlling for country political institutions and cultural attitudes we find related evidence that political participation is less responsive to schooling in countries with a higher skill premium as well as within countries for individuals in skilled occupations the evidence motivates a theoretical explanation in which patterns of political participation are influenced by the opportunity cost of engaging in political rather than production activities

poverty and the political economy of public education spending evidence from brazil a large body of literature has emphasized the elite capture of democratic institutions as the explanation for the low levels of spending on public education in many low income democracies this paper provides an alternative to that longstanding hypothesis motivated by new cross country facts and evidence from brazilian municipalities we hypothesize that many democratic developing countries might invest less in public education spending because poor decisive voters prefer the government to allocate resources elsewhere one possible explanation is that low income voters could instead favor redistributive programs that increase their incomes in the short run such as cash transfers to test for this possibility we design and implement an experimental survey and an incentivized choice experiment in brazil the findings from both interventions support our hypothesis

together or separate post conflict partition ethnic homogenization and the provision of public schooling abstract the partitioning of political jurisdictions is becoming an increasingly common component of agreements to end ethnic conflict although its impact on post conflict recovery remains unclear this paper studies the effects of the partition which ended the 1992 1995 bosnian war on the post war provision of public schooling i find that partitioned municipalities provide 58 more primary schools and 37 more teachers per capita driven mainly by convergent preferences for ethnically oriented schools however this arrangement delivers distributional consequences in partitioned municipalities ethnic majority children are more likely to complete primary schooling while for ethnic minority children it is the opposite

human capital social capital and public schooling abstract public education contributes to growth not only by building human capital but also by instilling common norms that increase social cohesion this is modeled in the context of a political economy framework in which social cohesion reduces wasteful rent seeking and thus strengthens incentives for investment in human captial the political decisions that determine whether different social groups retain separate schooling systems or adopt an integrated system weigh these material advantages against the psychic cost to parents of alienating their children from traditional values this aspect of public education helps explain why commonly education is publicly administered as well as publicly financed

the melting pot and school choice abstract in the united states parents are offered free public education in the mainstream culture but must pay the full cost of tuition if they educate their children privately this creates strong economic incentives for remaining within the public system which promotes the assimilation of minorities a pareto improvement can be achieved by subsidizing private education in exchange for modifying its social content so as to reduce polarization popular opposition to voucher programs that facilitate school choice without regulating cultural content may partly reflect voters concerns that such programs threaten to erode the common ground created by public education

do men and women respond differently to competition evidence from a major education reform this paper provides new evidence of gender differences in response to increased competition focusing on important life tasks performed in a regular social environment the analysis takes advantage of a major education reform in ontario that exogenously increased competition for university grades comparing students prereform and postreform using rich administrative data i find that male average grades and the proportion of male students graduating on time increased relative to females further the evidence indicates that these changes were due to increased relative effort rather than self selection the findings have implications for the delivery of education and incentive provision more generally