violence related injury and the price of beer in england and wales this paper examines the influence of the real price of beer on violence related injuries across the economic regions in england and wales the data are monthly frequency of violent injury collected from a stratified sample of 58 national health service emergency departments 1995 2000 an econometric model based on economic socio demographic and environmental factors was estimated using panel techniques we show that the rate of violence related injury is negatively related to the real price beer as well as economic sporting and socio demographic factors the principal conclusion of the paper is that the regional distribution of the incidence of violent injury is related to the regional distribution of the price of beer the major policy conclusion is that increased alcohol prices would result in substantially fewer violent injuries and reduced demand on trauma services

multiple dimensions of private information evidence from the long term care insurance market we demonstrate the existence of multiple dimensions of private information in the long term care insurance market two types of people purchase insurance individuals with private information that they are high risk and individuals with private information that they have strong taste for insurance ex post the former are higher risk than insurance companies expect while the latter are lower risk in aggregate those with more insurance are not higher risk our results demonstrate that insurance markets may suffer from asymmetric information even absent a positive correlation between insurance coverage and risk occurrence the results also suggest a general test for asymmetric information

the effect of school construction on test scores school enrollment and home prices abstract this paper provides new evidence on the effect of elementary and middle school construction projects on home prices academic achievement and school enrollment combining the staggered implementation of a comprehensive school construction project in a poor urban district with panel data on student test scores and neighborhoods of residence we find that by six years after building occupancy school construction increases reading scores by 0 15 standard deviations relative to the year before building occupancy we do not observe similar effects for math scores school construction raised home prices in affected neighborhoods by roughly 10 and led to increased public school enrollment

the demand for alcohol in the united kingdom using the aids model we show that there exists for the uk a stable long run relationship between expenditure shares on beer cider spirits and wine alcohol prices total alcohol expenditure and a range of non economic variables relating to advertising licensing the employment social class and demographic characteristics of consumers and climate our estimates of key price and income elasticities generally lie between those found from other time series studies which exclude most of these non economic variables and those found from cross section studies which generally include them however the restrictions required for separability homegeneity and symmetry although not those for perfect price aggregation are decisively rejected

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

the value of school facility investments evidence from a dynamic regression discontinuity design author s cellini stephanie riegg ferreira fernando rothstein jesse abstract despite extensive public infrastructure spending surprisingly little is known about its economic return in this paper we estimate the value of school facility investments using housing markets standard models of local public goods imply that school districts should spend up to the point where marginal increases would have zero effect on local housing prices our research design isolates exogenous variation in investments by comparing school districts where referenda on bond issues targeted to fund capital expenditures passed and failed by narrow margins we extend this traditional regression discontinuity approach to identify the dynamic treatment effects of bond authorization on local housing prices student achievement and district composition our results indicate that california school districts underinvest in school facilities passing a referendum causes immediate sizable increases in home prices implying a willingness to pay on the part of marginal homebuyers of 1 50 or more for each 1 of capital spending these effects do not appear to be driven by changes in the income or racial composition of homeowners and the impact on test scores appears to explain only a small portion of the total housing price effect c 2010 by the president and fellows of harvard college and the massachusetts institute of technology

the impact of alternative grade configurations on student outcomes through middle and high school abstract we use statewide administrative data from florida to estimate the impact of attending public schools with different grade configurations on student achievement through grade 10 based on an instrumental variable estimation strategy we find that students moving from elementary to middle school suffer a sharp drop in student achievement in the transition year these achievement drops persist through grade 10 we also find that middle school entry increases student absences and is associated with higher grade 10 dropout rates transitions to high school in grade 9 cause a smaller one time drop in achievement but do not alter students performance trajectories

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

does school quality matter returns to education and the characteristics of public schools in the united states this paper estimates the effects of school quality measured by the pupil teacher ratio average term length and relative teacher pay on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949 using earnings data from the 1980 census we find that men who were educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers holding constant school quality measures however we find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state level rates of return

how does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings evidence from project star in project star 11 571 students in tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade this article evaluates the long term impacts of star by linking the experimental data to administrative records we first demonstrate that kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27 college attendance home ownership and retirement savings we then document four sets of experimental impacts first students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27 but this effect is imprecisely estimated second students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings third an analysis of variance reveals significant classroom effects on earnings students who were randomly assigned to higher quality classrooms in grades k 3 as measured by classmates end of class test scores have higher earnings college attendance rates and other outcomes finally the effects of class quality fade out on test scores in later grades but gains in noncognitive measures persist

semiparametric analysis of german east west migration intentions facts and theory east west migration in germany peaked at the beginning of the 1990s although the average wage gap between eastern and western germany continues to average about 25 we analyse the propensity to migrate using microdata from the german socioeconomic panel fitting a parametric generalized linear model glm yields non linear residual behavior this finding is not compatible with classical marshallian theory of migration and motivates the semiparametric analysis we estimate a generalized partial linear model gplm where some components of the index of explanatory variables enter non parametrically we find the estimate of the non parametric influence in concordance with a number of alternative migration theories including the recently proposed option value of waiting theory 1998 john wiley sons ltd

investing in schools capital spending facility conditions and student achievement abstract public investments in repairs modernization and construction of schools cost billions however little is known about the nature of school facility investments whether it actually changes the physical condition of public schools and the subsequent causal impacts on student achievement we study the achievement effects of nearly 1400 capital campaigns initiated and financed by local school districts comparing districts where school capital bonds were either narrowly approved or defeated by district voters overall we find little evidence that these school capital campaigns improve student achievement event study analysis focused on the students actually affected by large campus renovations also generates very precise zero estimates of achievement effects thus u s school capital campaigns financed by local districts the predominant method through which facility investments are made may be a limited tool for realizing substantial gains in student achievement or closing achievement gaps

the effect of redistribution on migration evidence from the israeli kibbutz this paper tests a key theoretical prediction of public finance that local redistribution induces sorting of the population so that less productive individuals are located in communities with more redistribution specifically i use a longitudinal data set to test whether and to what extent the intensive redistribution practiced by israeli kibbutzim encourages exit of more productive individuals and entry of less productive ones the findings support the theoretical prediction kibbutz leavers are more skilled than both stayers and other rural migrants and they earn higher wages upon exit than observably similar city natives and other migrants in contrast individuals who earn lower wages in the city are more likely to enter a kibbutz but they are not more likely to move to other rural areas these findings also support borjas hypothesis that migrants self selection depends on the difference in returns to skills between the origin and the destination

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

assessing the efficiency of local open space provision abstract this paper tests the efficiency of local provision of land conservation i examine how housing prices which capitalize open space amenities and future tax obligations change after municipalities vote on referendums for conservation spending using a dynamic regression discontinuity based on voting outcomes results suggest that average housing prices increase about 0 68 1 12 for every 1000 per household of open space spending authorized which indicates inefficiency and underprovision of conservation i also examine tax capitalization and supply side explanations for estimated capitalization

school district operational spending and student outcomes evidence from tax elections in seven states abstract we use close tax elections to estimate the impact of school district funding increases on operational spending and student outcomes across seven states districts with passing levies directed new revenue toward support services and instructor salaries but did not increase teacher staffing levels these districts eventually realized gains in student achievement and attainment our preferred estimates imply that increasing operational spending by 1000 per pupil increased test scores by approximately 0 15 of a standard deviation and graduation rates by approximately 9 percentage points there is some evidence of diminishing returns as these effects are driven by districts below the median in spending per pupil based on research linking academic outcomes to earnings we conclude that these spending increases were likely cost effective

schooling and labor market consequences of school construction in indonesia evidence from an unusual policy experiment between 1973 and 1978 the indonesian government engaged in one of the largest school construction programs on record combining differences across regions in the number of schools constructed with differences across cohorts induced by the timing of the program suggests that each primary school constructed per 1 000 children led to an average increase of 0 12 to 0 19 years of education as well as a 1 5 to 2 7 percent increase in wages this implies estimates of economic returns to education ranging from 6 8 to 10 6 percent

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

the effect of school capital investments on local housing markets and household sorting in california abstractin this paper i investigate what effect school capital investments have on housing values and household location choice in the context of the tiebout model this research identifies an exogenous variation in school capital investments by exploiting the lottery allocation of entitlement to an interest free construction bond among districts in california although the lottery is exogenous additional non lottery allocation complicates identification this paper develops an empirical model based on sample selection methods in order to create a counterfactual state in which additional non lottery allocation would not have existed i find that receiving the interest free construction bond increases school capital expenditure and housing values at the district level i view the increase in housing values as the capitalization of school capital investments i find little evidence for the effect of the interest free construction bond on household sorting and student s academic outcomes

the virtuous tax lifesaving and crime prevention effects of the 1991 federal alcohol tax increase the last time that federal excise taxes on alcoholic beverages were increased was 1991 the changes were larger than the typical state level changes that have been used to study price effects but the consequences have not been assessed due to the lack of a control group here we develop and implement a novel method for utilizing interstate heterogeneity to estimate the aggregate effects of a federal tax increase on rates of injury fatality and crime we provide evidence that the relative importance of alcohol in violence and injury rates is directly related to per capita consumption and build on that finding to generate estimates a conservative estimate is that the federal tax which increased alcohol prices by 6 initially reduced injury deaths by 4 5 6480 deaths in 1991 and had a still larger effect on violent crime