empirical evaluation of bureaucratic models of inefficiency two separate but related strands of literature exist regarding the efficiency of public sector service provision the theoretical base developed in the bureaucratic models of supply and the methodological base developed in the operations research and economic literatures most analyses focus exclusively on either the measurement or causes of inefficiency this paper seeks to empirically test bureaucratic models of supply by drawing on the measurement literature in anticipation of the results it is found that there does exist empirical evidence supporting some of the implications of these models

the quality of schooling quantity alone is misleading although much research discusses the quantity of schooling as an effective impact on productivity and earnings most such research leaves out the idea of the quality of schooling which may cause biases in the estimated returns to schooling this paper consequently attempts to extend the standard mincerian approach to incorporate school quality as well as quantity it demonstrates how exclusion of quality in the standard procedure may cause biases in the estimated returns to years of schooling probably in the upward direction the paper explores the implications of this extension of the standard model for the case of young brazilian males it shows that the estimate of the private return to years of schooling using the preferred quality inclusive specification is only one half the estimate using the standard procedure indicating substantial upward bias in the standard estimates it further outlines a method for estimating a social return to quality and finds that it exceeds substantially the social return to quantity the paper then shows why this in turn suggests there may be an equity productivity trade off in schooling investments

do limits matter evidence on the effects of tax limitations on student performance abstract the goal of this research is to determine if limits on the revenue raising ability of school districts translate into constraints on the ability of these districts to affect student performance we use the recent imposition of property tax limitations on school districts in the chicago metropolitan area to determine if these limits have translated into slower growth in student performance we find only limited evidence that student performance in districts subject to the tax limitations has fallen relative to student performance in districts not subject to the limitations

education and contraceptive choice a conditional demand framework a multiperiod model of fertility and contraceptive choice which considers unobserved differential preferences for the timing of births is formulated conventional and conditional demand equations for contraceptives are derived from the model and the relationships in each between female education birth intentions and the level of contraceptive efficiency are compared demand equations derived from the model conditioned on birth intentions were shown to be superior to conventional demand equations in testing some of the assumptions pertaining to the technology of contraceptives embedded in the utility maximization framework a weak test of the hypothesis that education lowers the fixed costs of information associated with new technologies as exemplified by the oral contraceptive was shown to be obtainable only from consistent estimates of conditional contraceptive choice demand parameters as a consequence of the dual technological attributes of contraceptive methods if education affects both the costs of children and preference orderings over the spacing of births the education contraceptive use association conditional on the number of intended children cannot be used to make welfare comparisons across households the log linear model in which contraceptives were categorized on the basis of their cost characteristics and simulatenous equations techniques were used to obtain estimates of the conditional demand equations for contraceptives based on data from the national fertility survey 1970 estimates indicated that the education of the wife among households with identical fertility plans was significantly and positively associated with the adoption of the newer birth control methods in 1970 with quantitiative affects significantly greater than those indicated in reduced form and inconsistently estimated conditional equations appearing in a priori studies the results support the hypothesis that the relative magnitudes of fixed and variable contraceptive costs influence contraceptive decisions with the value of the wifes time an important component of the former and suggest that women with higher levels of education are more likely to use traditional contraceptive methods

budget constrained frontier measures of fiscal equality and efficiency in schooling equality and efficiency are key issues in educational reform here the authors analyze the efficiency and equality consequences of various school finance reforms using a cost indirect output distance function this function readily models multiple output production under conditions of budgetary constraint and provides a natural measure of performance that is closely related to farrell type measures of efficiency the analysis suggests that despite school district inefficiency finance reforms can affect student achievement however any potential gains in output from redistribution are dwarfed by the potential gains from increased efficiency more strikingly the analysis demonstrates that budgetary reforms designed to equalize expenditures could actually increase the inequality of student achievement

determinants of child mortality health and nutrition in a developing country abstract child health and nutrition status are important determinants of adult productivities and earnings and thus are an important channel of intergenerational socioeconomic mobility building upon economic models of household behavior we investigate the determinants of child mortality and health and nutrition status in regions defined by the degree of urbanization in the developing country of nicaragua and offer some policy suggestions our estimates suggest that determinants differ significantly across regions income is not an important factor there is an inverse relation with number of siblings and there are positive associations with calorie intake schooling except in the relatively low income rural areas the availability of refrigeration and the quality of sewage systems

a switching regression model for wage determinants in the public and private sectors of a developing country governments in less developed countries face severe budgetary constraints given that public sector employment is a large part of modern sector employment the government wage bill h as come under increased scrutiny the central question is how do gove rnment wages compare with those in the private sector in this paper the authors develop and estimate a model to answer this question an important aspect of this model is the endogenous treatment of sector choice the estimation results full information maximum likelihood sound a strong warning against the use of ordinary least squares est imates that are based on sector specific samples data are from the i vory coast copyright 1988 by mit press

the demand for education for home production this paper analyzes a type of education thus far ignored in the literature non credit adult education to enhance home production skills in the analysis we test whether such education behaves as an investment in home productivity and also compare the differences between demands for home productivity enhancing education and labor market enhancing education results on four adult cohorts indicate that both types of schooling have investment components although there are also significant differences in the two demand functions results also indicate that the two types of education are complementary rather than substitute activities

optimal wage taxation when human capital and employment are endogenous this paper studies how optimal wage tax conclusions from the classic two period life cycle model of human capital accumulation are affected by endogenizing the number of taxpaying workers in the absence of a corrective policy young individuals underinvest in human capital from a social perspective because tax premiums for transfers to nonworkers are not actuarially adjusted downward for human capital attainment a combination of wage taxes and wage subsidies can restore proper price signals numerical simulations suggest that even modest employment elasticities can be sufficient to substantially impact the magnitudes and even the signs of optimal wage tax rates jel h21 h3 j24

caveat emptor cross country data on education and the labor force abstract cross country data on education and the labor force frequently are used to describe important dimensions of development and to estimate models of economic growth and growth determinants the impact of education and related phenomena this investigation finds 1 there are serious intertemporal and inter country comparability problems with these data that may importantly affect inferences about labor force size trends and productivity and schooling investments and impact 2 data gaps are systematically related to levels of development and literacy and 3 conclusions about the determinants or consequences of development based on constructed data that have been made available to fill data gaps can be seriously misleading

consumer acceptance valuation of and attitudes towards genetically modified food review and implications for food policy abstract an increasing set of evidence has been reported on how consumers could potentially react to the introduction of genetically modified food studies typically contain some empirical evidence and some theoretical explanations of the data however to date limited effort has been posed on systematically reviewing the existing evidence and its implications for policy this paper contributes to the literature by bringing together the published evidence on the behavioural frameworks and evidence on the process leading to the public acceptance of genetically modified gm food and organisms gmos in doing so we employ a set of clearly defined search tools and a limited number of comprehensive key words the study attempts to gather an understanding of the published findings on the determinants of the valuation of gm food both in terms of willingness to accept and the willing to pay a premium for non gm food trust with information sources on the safety and public health and ultimate attitudes underpinning such evidence furthermore in the light of such evidence we formulate some policy strategies to deal with public uncertainly regarding to gmos and especially gm food

education and freedom of choice evidence from arranged marriages in vietnam abstractusing household data from vietnam we provide evidence on the effects of education on freedom of spouse choice we use war disruptions and spatial indicators of schooling supply as instruments the point estimates indicate that a year of additional schooling reduces the probability of an arranged marriage by about 14 percentage points for an individual with eight years of schooling we also estimate bounds on the effect of education on arranged marriage when exclusion restrictions are violated locally the lower bound is six to seven percentage points the impact of education is strong for women but significantly weaker for men

life expectancy and human capital investments evidence from maternal mortality declines longer life expectancy should encourage human capital accumulation since a longer time horizon increases the value of investments that pay out over time previous work has been unable to determine the empirical importance of this life expectancy effect due to the difficulty of isolating it from other effects of health on education we examine a sudden drop in maternal mortality risk in sri lanka between 1946 and 1953 which creates a sharp increase in life expectancy for school age girls without contemporaneous effects on health and which also allows for the use of boys as a control group using additional geographic variation we find that the 70 reduction in maternal mortality risk over the sample period increased female life expectancy at age 15 by 4 1 female literacy by 2 5 and female years of education by 4 0 authors

the consumption value of schooling an empirical estimate of one aspect the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate by example that human capital is more than just a capital good in the strictest sense of the term certain forms of human capital have consumption value in addition to the value of the increased stream offuture monetary and nonmonetary benefits a methodfor empirically estimating the consumption value of schooling as a vehicle to avoid the vietnam war draft is presented

an economic model of teaching effectiveness the literature on the determinants of good teaching performance has been largely devoted to empirical measurement a complete review of the publications in this area would require at least an entire issue the size of this journal yet it is virtually impossible to discover attempts to derive hypotheses about the determinants of good teaching from explicit models of behavior this has led researchers into the trap of exploring only the empirical determinants of good teaching performance typically the results of student evaluations are correlated with affective personality traits of the teachers with peer evaluations of psychological compositions or even with the results of various psychological tests examples are the works of robert isaacson et al frank costin et al and wilbert mckeachie et al in most of these studies no substantive conclusions are reached regarding the determinants of effective teaching in the few studies which do contain significant findings the independent variable in question is difficult to explain as a direct determinant of teaching effectiveness for example isaacson et al find that virtually the only statistically significant determinant of effective teaching is the personality characteristic which they label culture this may imply that simply wearing a tweed jacket and taking up pipesmoking is sufficient to improve teaching this paper takes a somewhat different approach to the analysis of teaching assume that the individual in question wishes to maximize teaching effectiveness clearly there are constraints on this maximization process one must necessarily be the time budget constraint a second constraint however adds a good deal of interest to the model this constraint is best described as the bundle of characteristics available to the individual these characteristics could be termed the components of the individual s personality such attributes include physical appearance psychological makeup speaking ability and a myriad of other variables thus this model bears a resemblance to the standard economic models of monopolistic competition see a michael spence before proceeding to a formal statement of the problem a philosophical issue must be addressed what is meant by teaching effectiveness generally this is interpreted as maximizing student evaluations of teachers however this is clearly not always equivalent to maximizing student learning unfortunately the latter variable is difficult but not impossible to measure preand posttesting with standardized tests is becoming increasingly accepted for example the meaning of teaching effectiveness in this paper must unfortunately remain ambiguous some teachers concerned perhaps with obtaining tenure will interpret good teaching as obtaining good evaluations the criterion by which they are judged others may take a more eclectic viewpoint since the problem below is an individual maximization problem the precise definition of effective teaching may simply vary from individual to individual see w r allen formally this problem is exactly analogous to one first addressed by kelvin lancaster he assumes that the consumer attempts to maximize satisfaction through purchase of bundles of attributes each commodity is possessed of certain of these characteristics by consuming various combinations of these commodities the consumer is assistant professor department of economics and director center for economic education california state university hayward i would like to thank alex cassuto nancy sanders and an anonymous referee for helpful discussion in a previously unreported experiment in the department of economics california state universitybakersfield faculty members were required to wear coats and ties in classes it was subsequently observed that teaching evaluations improved unfortunately no detailed statistical results of this experiment are available for analysis

who is behavioral cognitive ability and anomalous preferences in this paper we ask whether variation in preference anomalies is related to variation in cognitive ability evidence from a new laboratory study of chilean high school students with similar schooling backgrounds shows that small stakes risk aversion and short run discounting are less common among those with higher standardized test scores the relationship with test scores survives controls for parental education and wealth we find some evidence that elementary school gpa is predictive of preferences measured at the end of high school two laboratory interventions provide suggestive evidence of a possible causal impact of cognitive resources on expressed preferences jel j24 d14 c91

production and innovation when techniques are tacit the case of education abstract the central theme of this paper is that the conventional economic theory of production does not hold even approximately in a field like education after examining the result of input output studies in education and the effect of government attempts to enhance education effectiveness we provide a sketch of a new production theory for sectors where techniques are poorly articulated and idiosyncratic

design and policy choices for technology extension organizations abstract governments anxious to assist the smes in their countries to survive and grow face not only policy choices about how to assist with technology financial resources and business direction but also the complex issues of how to design organizations that can deliver these policies effectively this study is a comparative analysis of how technology extension te organizations are designed to support smes in seven countries the study focuses on the design requirements for such organizations and on the design choices that have been used to satisfy the design requirements given different policy frameworks prescriptive advice on the design of te organizations is offered to both policy makers and managers of such organizations

modeling multiple outputs in educational production functions for some time now economists have conceptualized learning as a production process most educational production functions specify only one output usually a measure of cognitive achievement some recent studies have recognized the multidimensional aspects of schooling specifying outputs in both the cognitive and affective domains introducing multiple outputs into the production function raises interesting theoretical and empirical issues one issue is the manner in which various outputs are interrelated how one models output interactions in educational production functions may be important are the outputs multiple products if so are they independently or simultaneously produced or are the outputs joint products answers to these questions may affect empirical estimates of the educational production function s this paper briefly describes how one might approach this problem we argue on conceptual grounds that modeling outputs in the cognitive and affective domains as joint products is preferable in addition we compare the three approaches empirically to evaluate the sensitivity of educational production function parameter estimates to output specification

partial fiscal decentralization reforms and educational outcomes a difference in differences analysis for spain abstract several arguments derived from fiscal federalism theory suggest that decentralization may improve the provision of public goods and services however theory remains inconclusive regarding these effects under partial decentralization the aim of this study is to examine this hypothesis by evaluating the effects on educational outcomes of the partial fiscal decentralization reform that took place in spain during the 1980s since education competences were devolved to the regions at different points in time we can consistently estimate the effects of this reform by applying the differences in differences method and by using the non decentralized regions as the comparison group we find that the reform had a sizeable impact on the percentage of students dropping out early from school the effects are much stronger for regions with a high level of revenues we also find that the effects are concentrated in the high school program and that the reform was not able to improve educational outcomes in the vocational program we interpret these results as evidence that decentralization improved the match between education policy and population preferences

schools and housing markets an examination of school segregation and performance in connecticut this paper estimates a dynamic model of price level school performance and school racial and ethnic composition in the state of connecticut the paper finds that increasing minority representation in a labor market area reinforces the existing pattern of school segregation changes in segregation appear to be influenced by demographic trends in urban areas and by the labour market factors that determine those trends there is no evidence however to suggest that this process affects housing prices rather the housing market appears to adjust relatively quickly

schooling and economic well being the role of nonmarket effects standard estimates of the economic value of additional schooling based on earnings differences associated with differences in the level of schooling attained cover only a portion of the total effects of education that are valued by citizens we first identify a catalog of nonmarketed effects many of which have been recently studied by economists and then propose a procedure for estimating a willingness to pay value for these effects using empirical estimates of the magnitude of a selection of these effects found in the literature we calculate willingness to pay values using our proposed procedure these illustrative calculations suggest that standard estimates of the benefit of incremental schooling substantially understate the full value of such investments

teacher training teacher quality and student achievement abstract we study the effects of various types of education and training on the productivity of teachers in promoting student achievement previous studies on the subject have been hampered by inadequate measures of teacher training and difficulties in addressing the non random selection of teachers to students and of teachers to training we address these issues by estimating models that include detailed measures of pre service and in service training a rich set of time varying covariates and student teacher and school fixed effects we find that elementary and middle school teacher productivity increases with experience informal on the job training the largest gains from experience occur in the first few years but we find continuing gains beyond the first five years of a teacher s career in contrast we do not find a consistent relationship between formal professional development training and teacher productivity however this may be partly driven by estimation issues as we find more significant positive effects of formal training in the subject grade combination where estimates should be most precise middle school math there is no evidence that teachers pre service undergraduate training or college entrance exam scores are related to productivity

anticipating the consequences of school reform a new use of dea we use dea type linear programming techniques to simulate a basic component of educational reform eliminating restrictions on the allocation of school personnel our technique allows us to identify potential output gains or equivalently potential cost savings from reform we can also identify which personnel groups are likely to gain and lose under this reform when we apply our model to a sample of texas school districts we find evidence that the educational establishment has substantial economic rents to protect from school reform and that the primary beneficiaries of reform are likely to be affluent school districts with few minority students the technique which relies on the relationship between the direct and indirect distance functions can be easily generalized to measure the potential gains from removing other input restrictions such as union work rules environmental regulations or deed restrictions

does cooperation enhance competitiveness assessing the impacts of inter firm collaboration abstract collaboration among small and medium sized enterprises smes is an emerging approach to industrial competitiveness since first noted in western europe governments agencies and private foundations have experimented with policies to stimulate and accelerate forms of inter firm collaboration commonly called manufacturing networks the assumption behind such policies is that cooperative behavior will help smes firms compete and therefore the goal is to alter the behavior of enterprises and to facilitate co operation these strategies are part of an emerging national effort to stimulate industrial modernization through a variety of interventions state legislatures and government agencies being asked to invest in network initiatives want to know whether they are meeting their goals and what impacts they are having on their state regional and national economies while investments small in scale expectations are high this article draws on two evaluations of network initiatives one sponsored by a state and one by a private foundation to discuss issues methodologies evidence of impacts and challenges the first evaluation requested by for the oregon economic development department occurred at an early stage in the process and therefore was limited to the process and early industry responses the second requested by the northwest area foundation was over the 3 year grant period and also included some measures of change among participating smes both however illustrate the difficulties in trying to attribute bottom line changes in a business and economic changes in an economy to relatively small and indirect interventions and the need for additional research on measures and methodologies

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

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

ability tracking school competition and the distribution of educational benefits abstract to study the effects of ability grouping on school competition we develop a theoretical and computational model of tracking in public and private schools we examine tracking s consequences for the allocation of students of differing abilities and income within and between public and private schools private schools tend to attract the most able and wealthiest students and rarely track in equilibrium public sector schools can maximize attendance by tracking students public schools retain a greater proportion of higher ability students by tracking but lose more wealthy lower ability students to the private sector consequently socioeconomic status is a predictor of track assignment in public schools for the entire population public sector tracking has small aggregate effects on achievement and welfare but results in significant redistribution from lower to higher ability students

us manufacturing extension partnerships technology policy reinvented abstract the us manufacturing extension partnership mep is examined as an example of the new partnership paradigm in us technology policy the mep provides technology assistance services particularly for small and medium sized enterprises influenced by aims to reinvent government and reorient technology policy the mep seeks to be comprehensive collaborative and demand driven however the mep s partnered management style is constrained by political and industrial systems that continue to operate on traditional lines after probing these tensions the paper offers insights for the mep s future development and for other technology and innovation policies that seek to emulate the mep s partnership approach

gender and ethnicity differentials in school attainment and labor market earnings in ecuador summary indigenous people in ecuador are most likely to be disadvantaged and live in poverty this paper reports on the findings of an econometric analysis which explores the extent to which lower educational attainment and labor market discrimination contribute to these disparities the analysis utilizes a proportional hazard regression model to examine which factors raise the probability of early school departure it also employs a classic regression model to explore the relationship between low educational attainment and earnings together with an oaxaca decomposition which parses out the extent to which earning differentials can be attributed to differences in human capital or to discrimination

school decentralization helping the good get better but leaving the poor behind abstract the decentralization of public services is a major feature of institutional innovation the main argument in support of decentralization is that it brings decisions closer to the people thereby alleviating information asymmetries and improving accountability however decentralization can also degrade service provision in poor communities that lack the ability to voice and defend their preferences in this paper we analyze the average and distributional effects of school decentralization on educational quality in argentina we find that decentralization had an overall positive impact on student test scores the decentralization gains however did not reach the poor thus although bringing decisions closer to the people may help the good get better the already disadvantaged may not receive these benefits

consumer perceived risk model for the introduction of genetically modified food in spain abstract since the last part of the 20th century the search for new forms of cultivation and food has basically centred on the application of biotechnology giving rise to gm foods consumer acceptance is conditioned by the risk that they perceive from introducing food into their consumption habits processed through technology that they hardly understand besides information is insufficient in the consumer ambit and moreover it is influenced by ideological and ethical determining factors the factors were analysed that influence this consumer perceived risk through a structural equation model this study was conducted in spain concretely in the province of alicante located in the southeast of this country the main conclusion from this research is that the introduction of gm food into agro food markets should be accompanied by adequate policies to guarantee consumer safety these actions would allow a decrease in consumer perceived risk by taking special care of the information provided concretely relating to health for the most influential factor in consumer perceived risk from these foods is concern about health

the economic consequences of brain drain of the best and brightest microeconomic evidence from five countries this article presents results of innovative surveys that tracked academic high achievers from five countries to wherever they moved in the world to directly measure at the micro level the channels through which high skilled emigration affects sending countries there are high levels of emigration and of return and the income gains to the best and brightest from migrating are an order of magnitude greater than any other effect most high skilled migrants from poorer countries remit but involvement in trade and foreign direct investment is rare fiscal costs vary widely but are much less than the benefits to the migrants themselves two narratives drive discussions of the development impact of high skilled migration the first is the idea of a brain drain whereby the departure of doctors teachers engineers scientists and other highly skilled workers decimates the human capital and fiscal revenues of sending countries bhagwati and hamada 1974 such fears lead to calls for policies to restrict the flow of highly skilled workers such as demands that developed countries stop recruiting doctors from developing nations and efforts by developing nations to restrict the ease of their highly skilled individuals migrating 1 contrasting with this is the view of a highly educated diaspora as a potent force for developing the local economy through remittances trade foreign direct investment fdi and knowledge transfers with the experience of india and china in setting up technology firms as a result of diaspora working in silicon valley a prominent example saxenian 2002 economists have also emphasised that the possibility of migrating may spur human capital accumulation potentially leading to a net increase in the education levels of those in the home country 2

current practices in the evaluation of us industrial modernization programs abstract the expansion of public policies and programs to promote the technological modernization of small and mid sized manufacturing enterprises in the united states has been accompanied by an increased interest in assessing the effectiveness and impact of these initiatives this article examines current practices used in the evaluation of us industrial modernization programs at state and national levels drawing on interviews with program managers site visits and scrutiny of available studies issues related to the meaning of evaluation in the context of industrial modernization the scale and scope of existing programs and the definition of metrics are considered a series of evaluation approaches methods and studies are identified and reviewed including the role of program monitoring customer valuation external reviews economic impact studies control groups and assessments of best practice the authors address the use of evaluation results and discuss key challenges and directions relevant to the development of more robust evaluation procedures

human capital accumulation and the expansion of women s economic rights abstractbetween 1850 and 1920 most u s states enacted laws expanding the rights of married women to own and control their separate property and to own their market earnings the economic approach to property rights implies that as married women gain economic rights the incentive to invest in girls human capital will rise this prediction is tested by examining the impact of these legal changes on girls school attendance rates relative to boys state level census data are used to examine the effects of these changes on school attendance among all school aged children integrated public use microdata series data are used to examine their effect on school attendance among children ages 15 19 who are just beyond compulsory schooling ages consistent with hypothesized effects the empirical analysis shows that expanding women s economic rights resulted in higher relative rates of school attendance by girls and had the largest effect on the 15 19 age group

paying for good neighbours estimating the value of an implied educated community by definition spillovers across households in residential communities mean that people incur costs from living in neighbourhoods where a high proportion of households suffer deprivation regardless of their own economic circumstances to verify the existence of intracommunity spillovers this paper shows that home owners in england and wales are prepared to pay a substantial premium to avoid educationally poor neighbourhoods an increase of 1 per cent in the proportion of higher educated residents in a community relative to the regional mean increases prices by 0 24 per cent one interpretation of this educational elasticity is that it estimates the social benefits of education in the local community a hedonic approach is used paying careful attention to the endogeneity of neighbourhood characteristics in a property price model

health and wage a simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in this article we propose all econometric approach for estimating the simultaneouls effects of health and wages in a structural equations framework in the theoretical works of grossmana 1972a 1972b health is viewed as anl elldogen1oulsly determined capital stock the demand for health should rise with the wage rate as the rate of return to health investment increases with wage onl the other hand better health should raise market productivity and hence wages since health capital is an abstract theoretical concept it can hardly be measured quantitatively however most population surveys include various health indicators these indicators are usually discrete variables in the empirical work of grossman and benham 1974 these qualitative indicators are treated as continuous variables and two stage least squares estimation techniques are used this specification raises various econometric problems see e g goldberger 1964 pp 248 255 domencich and mcfadden 1975 and nerlove and press 1973 a satisfactory specification should take into account the discrete nature of the indicators our specification generalizes the dummy variables simultaneous equations system of heckman 1978 the measurement models of joreskog and goldberger 1975 and is closely related to the models of muthe n 1976 1979 muthen studies full information maximum likelihood procedures for estimation except for very simple cases this does not generally yield feasible or tractable procedures in this article we introduce a tractable procedure for statistical estimation and testing this specification and the estimation procedure is then applied to study the joint dependence of health and wages another departure of our approach from others is that we will test and correct the possible incompatibility of the various health capital indicators in the population surveys one may have subjective health indicators such as self evaluation of health which may reflect different populations perception of health we propose a statistical procedure for testing measurement compatibility and if required for correcting this problem this article is divided into two parts initially we describe the model specification estimation and statistical tests in a general simultaneous equation model with multiple discrete indicators in the second part of the paper we consider specification of a simultaneous equation model for health and wages the model

on consumers willingness to purchase nutritionally enhanced genetically modified food this study assesses consumers willingness to purchase genetically modified gm food products with two different types of benefits an input i e reduced pesticides and an output trait benefit i e nutritionally enhanced data were collected using a telephone survey of an italian households sample discrete choice approach is used to elicit the purchase intentions of the respondents four separate probit models are estimated to examine the effect of various factors on choices results suggest that majority of italians are not willing to buy gm food products even if they are nutritionally enhanced however more consumers are willing to buy a nutritionally enhanced plant based gm product than a traditional plant based gm with input trait benefit willingness to buy for a nutritionally enhanced animal based gm product and for a traditional animal based gm product with input trait benefit are similar consumers unwilling to buy gm food would not buy it even if it is nutritionally enhanced and has lo

parental altruism and child lead exposure inferences from the demand for chelation therapy we use parents decisions to treat their children s body burdens of lead to infer parental ex ante willingness to pay for reduced burdens willingness to pay is estimated with a data set containing 256 observations the data were originally gathered to assess the impact of children s body lead burdens upon their intellectual and behavioral development our results indicate that parental ex ante willingness to pay for a 1 percent reduction in child body lead burden exceeds the estimated ex post savings in medical treatment and compensatory education costs caused by the same reduction

multidimensional welfare distributions empirical application to household panel data from vietnam this article explores the empirical application of theoretical multidimensional welfare distribution analysis techniques to real household welfare distributions the article operationalizes recent conceptual developments in multidimensional distribution theory and assesses their usefulness for the measurement of multidimensional household inequality the results strongly highlight the importance of bringing nonmonetary aspects of household welfare into the forefront of inequality analysis agreement over the various approaches to the measurement of multidimensional inequality entails however nontrivial decisions that may limit the practical usefulness of these measures we suggest that the use of multidimensional inequality ranges and the application of restrictive dominance criteria to multidimensional welfare distributions may open significant scope for further developments in the empirical analysis of multidimensional inequality

dollars and performance treating alcohol misuse in maine abstract if public funds are allocated efficiently then an increase in funding should improve the performance of substance abuse treatment programs in the data used in this paper performance measured as abstinence rates and expenditures per patient are not positively correlated one explanation is that funding is endogeneous i e programs treating more difficult patients receive more funding the data comes from all maine s outpatient drug free programs that received public funding between 1991 and 1994 after controlling for endogeneity this paper concludes that the marginal impact of expenditures per patient on abstinence rates is small and statistically insignificantly different from zero

fda s regulation of genetically engineered foods scientific legal and political dimensions abstract the controversy over genetically engineered ge food during the southern africa drought in 2002 03 raised questions concerning the safety of ge foods and the basis for the safety assurances issued by national and international agencies in the case of foods grown in the us these assurances must be interpreted in relation to the food and drug administration s fda 1992 policy which remains in effect today this paper provides a detailed examination of the roles of scientific legal and political considerations in the development of that policy this paper reveals that the fda responded to political pressure for a permissive regulatory approach by exploiting gaps in scientific knowledge creatively interpreting existing food law and limiting public involvement in the policy s development common statements by the government and other proponents concerning sound science rigorous testing no evidence of harm and as safe as conventional foods are found to be misleading unless the scientific legal and political basis for the us policy is taken into account while this paper finds that the evidence for the safety of ge foods has been exaggerated by government agencies and other parties nothing in this paper suggests that ge foods currently on the market are harmful to human health to the contrary the situation is one of great uncertainty repeated recommendations that this issue be the topic of a major public research effort have yet to be acted upon

the effect on black white wage differences of differences in the quantity and quality of education using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth for the years 1979 88 the author examines the extent to which black white differences in educational attainment educational quality and unmeasured individual ability can explain black white wage differences an analysis that corrects for both selectivity and ability biases inherent in estimating the education wage relationship shows that the main source of the black white wage differential is the racial difference in the quality rather than quantity of schooling in fact the author concludes closing the racial gap in the basic skills learned in school could reduce the wage differential by two thirds

intergenerational transfers production and income distribution abstract we consider an overlapping generations economy where the aggregative production process uses physical capital and human capital intergenerational transfers from parents to their children are motivated by altruism we distinguish between two types of transfers investment of parents in the education of their offspring and capital transfer the gift bequest motive we show that the intensity of each type of altruism and hence the composition of the two types of transfers affect significantly the equilibrium output and the intragenerational income distributions comparing competitive equilibria from the same initial distributions of capital transfers and human capital we derive a the economy with the higher education inclined altruism attains lower output and more equal intragenerational income distributions if either the production function s elasticity of substitution is not large or the altruism is weak b for more bequest inclined altruism the effects are usually reversed c under public provision of education higher bequest inclined altruism results in lower output and less equal distribution of income in all dates

a latent class approach to investigating demand for genetically modified banana in uganda this study explores consumer acceptance and valuation of a genetically modified gm staple food crop in a developing country prior to its commercialization we focus on the hypothetical introduction of a disease resistant gm banana variety in uganda where bananas are among the most important staple crops a choice experiment is used to investigate consumer preferences for various attributes related to the banana such as bunch size technology producer benefit and price and examine their opinions on gm foodstuff choice data come from 421 banana consuming households randomly selected from three regions of uganda a latent class model is used to investigate the heterogeneity in consumers preferences for selected attributes related to the banana and to profile consumers who are more or less likely to accept gm bananas our results reveal that there is significant heterogeneity in consumer preferences across our sample gm bananas are valued the most by poorer households located in the rural areas of the eastern region these food insecure households would experience the highest benefits i e welfare gains from the commercial release of gm bananas in contrast urban consumers are less accepting of gm bananas and they would experience significant welfare losses if gm banana is released according to our welfare estimates both the total welfare benefits acquired by the gainers and the total welfare losses borne by the losers of this technology are significant and large these results suggest the need for further investigation of the overall welfare effects of the introduction of gm bananas on the ugandan society as a whole

the relevance of standard estimates of rates of return to schooling for education policy a critical assessment abstract this paper examines the accuracy and usefulness of estimated rates of return to schooling based on the standard human capital model of becker and mincer regarding accuracy it investigates whether failure to account for differences in ability and school quality lead to significant biases estimates using ghanaian data confirm this possibility even when accurate estimated rates of return to additional years of schooling may have limited policy implications more useful for governments are rates of return to investments in school quality the paper uses data on cognitive skills to estimate rates of return to three types of school quality improvements

schools and housing values this study combines historical and quantitative methods to determine the market response to a major nineteenth century american urban architectural form the speculatively built row house the paper estimates a hedonic price index which decomposes the

women work and weil being in the middle east an outline of the relevant literature there is now an extensive literature on the role of women in economic development and the impact of development on their lives this article concentrates on the economic literature and discusses its importance for policies aimed at working women in the middle east it identifies the important strands and places the discussion within the wider context of women in the labour market in both developing and developed countries the general conclusion is that we are very far from having sufficient knowledge to implement effective policy or even to evaluate existing policies

cost and income based measures of human capital human capital is increasingly believed to play an important role in the growth process however adequately measuring its stock remains controversial in this paper three general approaches to measurement are identified cost based income based and educational stock based this survey focuses on the first two approaches and provides a critical review of the theories and their applications to data from a range of countries particular emphasis is placed upon the work of jorgenson and fraumeni 1989 1992 and some new results for new zealand based upon their approach are also presented

do schools matter for high math achievement evidence from the american mathematics competitions this paper uses data from the american mathematics competitions to examine the rates at which different high schools produce high achieving math students there are large differences in the frequency with which students from seemingly similar schools reach high achievement levels the distribution of unexplained school effects includes a thick tail of schools that produce many more high achieving students than is typical several additional analyses suggest that the differences are not primarily due to unobserved differences in student characteristics the differences are persistent across time suggesting that differences in the effectiveness of educational programs are not primarily due to direct peer effects

a measure of federalism assessing manufacturing technology centers abstract this article considers the evaluation of manufacturing technology centers mtcs and the possibilities for a new experimental federalism in public administration in the light of the emergence of collaborative learning among firms economic volatility is leading to decentralized decision making authority within and among firms which entails a new understanding of performance measurement and economic coordination the decentralization of decisions compels that goals and achievement indicators be continuously revised to reflect learning through local autonomy to achieve this end firms adopt disciplines requiring continuous exchange of information about organizational improvements mtcs are already encouraging firms to do just this hence assessment of the mtcs should provide a public setting for the centers to learn why they are good or bad at helping firms monitor themselves national comparisons are proposed of similar projects at different centers and of different combinations of services provided by centers and their respective regional partners this makes improvement of the parts of the system the discrete classes of service independent of improvement of the whole the architecture of the centers as development agencies the conclusion examines the resulting form of experimental federalism as the analog in governmental organization to collaborative production in firms

on the contract curve a test of alternative models of collective bargaining the traditional model of collective bargaining confines unions to settlements constrained by the employer s labor demand curve but an alternative model places wage employment outcomes on a contract curve that extends beyond the labor demand curve this paper derives a multidimensional hedonic contract curve model in which employment security provisions are used to maintain efficient bargains outside the employer s demand curve and distinguishes empirically between the contract curve and demand constraint models using data for public school teachers in new york state estimates clearly support the contract curve model over the demand constraint model by linking the gap between compensation and the value of the marginal product to the strength of employment security provisions

human capital vs signalling explanations of wages increases wages by directly increasing the worker s productivity this learning explanation is usually associated with human capital theory however it seems unlikely that learning explains all the wage differences associated with schooling and work history better educated workers are not a random sample of workers they have lower propensities to quit or to be absent are less likely to smoke drink or use illicit drugs and are generally healthier it is unlikely that employers make full use of differences in propensities to quit or to be absent or sick when hiring workers these characteristics are often not directly observed and the americans with disabilities act precludes firms from using either poor health or the likelihood of future sickness as a hiring criterion unless it is directly related to job performance however if low levels of education are associated with these unfavorable employee characteristics and employers are allowed to take education into account when hiring workers we would expect employers to favor better educated workers as a means of reducing their costs of sickness and job turnover in turn students will take these hiring criteria into account when deciding how long to stay in school students will choose a length of schooling to signal their ability to employers and employers will demand a minimum level of schooling

the microeconomics of manufacturing modernization programs abstract manufacturing modernization programs are designed to improve the competitiveness of small and medium sized manufacturers by accelerating their use of best practice technologies justification for these programs is most often cast in terms of past slow rates of adoption international economic competitiveness and market failures in the provision of information these frameworks however do not adequately address policy and programmatic issues related to program design financing and program evaluation using a microeconomic model based on the firm and industry level effects of these programs we examine the importance of spillover benefits from modernization efforts both horizontal spillovers to rivals of program clients and vertical spillovers to clients customers and the implications for these policy and programmatic issues

the impact of educational standards on the level and distribution of earnings the goal of this paper is to present the following finding an egalitarian policy maker might prefer higher standards than would a policy maker whose goal was to maximize the sum of earnings the result is based on the observation that if workers are differentiated with respect to ability an increase in educational standards will increase the earnings of both the most able and the least able workers the only workers whose earnings fall are those workers who after the increase fail to continue meeting the standard

location and education in south african cities under and after apartheid we model a south african city during apartheid in which both schooling and mobility are restricted on the basis of race and after apartheid in which no restrictions are imposed we first show that the inequality between blacks and whites decreases when apartheid laws are removed indeed blacks are better off because of human capital externalities due to the possibility of mixing with white students whereas whites are worse off due to negative human capital externalities and intensified land market competition after apartheid we also show that reducing the commuting costs of black children always increases the utility of black families and may even increase that of whites

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

consumer willingness to pay for genetically modified food in kenya genetically modified gm crops are popular in many regions of the world but their deployment in africa is hindered by safety concerns and regulatory issues although the continent is in dire need of boosting its food production although consumers acceptance of gm food has been analyzed in many continents no such studies have been conducted in africa therefore a survey of 604 consumers was conducted in nairobi kenya in 2003 to gauge consumers awareness of gm crops their willingness to pay wtp for gm food and the factors that influence their wtp consumers knowledge of gm crops was limited and only 38 of the 604 respondents were aware of gm crops people in higher education and income groups were more aware than others regardless people were generally appreciative of the technology and a large majority 68 would be willing to buy gm maize meal at the same price as their favorite brand consumers were however concerned about possible side effects especially on the environment and biodiversity wtp was estimated using a double bounded dichotomous choice model and the mean wtp was found to be 13 8 higher than the average price of non gm maize meal perceptions of health risk and ethical and equity concerns had a negative influence on the likelihood of purchasing gm maize meal whereas trust in government to ensure food quality had a positive influence on wtp people with at least some secondary education and those in the high income category were more likely to purchase gm maize meal at the same price the study concludes that because awareness is still low appropriate communications are needed to involve the consumer in the debate consumers acceptance in this study was high but the research needs to be expanded to rural areas where most consumers live and other survey methods need to be explored

applying partial least squares to model genetically modified food purchase intentions in southern spain consumers abstract consumers potential reactions towards genetically modified gm foods influence their commercial feasibility and determine the decisions of economic agents this paper studies the underlying factors involved in determining consumers choice behaviour towards gm foods in order to develop an integrated analytical framework reliable information about consumers behaviour towards gm foods should lead to the design of political strategies intended to make citizens feel safe in their purchasing choices in addition there is an analysis of behavioural differences due to consumers objective knowledge levels the research was performed in southern spain using variance based structural equation modelling namely the partial least squares pls regression technique the results support those arguments that connect consumers behavioural intentions attitudes and different factors involved in determining consumer choice because attitudes towards gm foods link consumer purchasing intentions to the perceived benefits and risks posed by gm foods furthermore there are some insights into the moderating role played by the consumers level of knowledge in their purchase intentions to gm food