passing school building tax levies may increase teacher salary abstract we examine 4000 votes on school district tax levies for capital expenditures in ohio over 24 years we find that passing school building tax levies increases average teacher salaries by 1 the effects are generally present one through three years after levy passage quantile regression shows that teachers already in the highest paid districts receive even larger salary increases than teachers in lower paid districts this may be the first regression discontinuity capital expenditures study to look specifically at teacher salary or use quantile regression

optimal advertising of auctions we study a symmetric independent private values auction model where the revenue maximizing seller faces a cost cn of attracting n bidders to the auction if the distribution of valuations possesses an increasing failure rate ifr the seller overinvests in attracting bidders compared to the social optimum conversely if the distribution is dfr the seller underinvests compared to the social optimum if the distribution of valuations becomes more dispersed both a revenue and a welfare maximizing seller attract more bidders

teacher quality in educational production tracking decay and student achievement growing concerns over the inadequate achievement of u s students have led to proposals to reward good teachers and penalize or fire bad ones the leading method for assessing teacher quality is value added modeling vam which decomposes students test scores into components attributed to student heterogeneity and to teacher quality implicit in the vam approach are strong assumptions about the nature of the educational production function and the assignment of students to classrooms in this paper i develop falsification tests for three widely used vam specifications based on the idea that future teachers cannot influence students past achievement in da ta from north carolina each of the vams exclusion restrictions are dramatically viola ted in particular these models indicate large effects of 5th grade teachers on 4th grade t est score gains i also find that conventional measures of individual teachers value added fade out very quickly and are at best weakly related to long run effects i discuss implic ations for the use of vams as personnel tools

taxation of outbound direct investment economic principles and tax policy considerations this paper reviews economic principles for optimality of the taxation of international profit from both a global and national perspective it argues that for traditional systems based on the residence of the investor or the source of the income nothing less than full harmonisation across countries can achieve global optimality the conditions for national optimality are more difficult to identify but are most likely to imply source based taxation however source based taxation requires an allocation of the profits of multinational companies to individual jurisdictions this is not only very difficult in practice but in some cases is without any conceptual foundation the taxation of interest income on a residence basis is also hard to justify if the aim of the tax system is to tax only the income arising from economic activity in a given country

do better schools matter parental valuation of elementary education the evaluation of numerous school reforms requires an understanding of the value of better schools given the difficulty of calculating the relationship between school quality and student outcomes i turn to another method and use house prices to infer the value parents place on school quality i look within school districts at houses located on attendance district boundaries houses then differ only by the elementary school the child attends i thereby effectively remove the variation in neighborhoods taxes and school spending i find that parents are willing to pay 2 5 percent more for a 5 percent increase in test scores this finding is robust to a number of sensitivity checks

the analytics of the pricing of higher education and other services in which the customers are inputs many services provide outputs that depend partially on the customers as inputs the presence of other customers often contributes to the output experienced by each purchaser higher education is the premier example others are legion we provide a simple model that addresses the questions of competitive pricing and allocative efficiency for these types of services prices that charge customers for what they get on net output minus input from the firm both are competitive and support efficient allocations these prices internalize the apparent external effects of customers on each other few examples of such prices exist in the real world

on the simple economics of advertising marketing and product design we propose a framework for analyzing transformations of demand such transformations frequently stem from changes in the dispersion of consumers valuations which lead to rotations of the demand curve in many settings profits are a u shaped function of dispersion high dispersion is complemented by niche production and low dispersion is complemented by mass market supply we investigate numerous applications including product design advertising marketing and sales advice and the construction of quality differentiated product lines we also suggest a new taxonomy of advertising distinguishing between hype which shifts demand and real information which rotates demand

optimal auctions with information acquisition this paper studies optimal auction design in a private value setting with endogenous information acquisition first we develop a general framework for modeling information acquisition when a seller wants to sell an object to one of several potential buyers who can each gather information about their valuations prior to participation we then show that under certain conditions standard auctions with a reserve price remain optimal but the optimal reserve price lies between the mean valuation and the standard reserve price in myerson 1981 we provide sucient conditions under which the value of information to the seller is positive and also characterize the necessary and sucient conditions under which equilibrium information acquisition in private value auctions is socially excessive the key to the analysis is the insight that buyer incentives to acquire information become stronger as the reserve price moves toward the mean valuation

economics coursework and long term behavior and experiences of college graduates in labor markets and personal finance i introduction if economics is a unique way of thinking as many economists like to claim some level of coursework in economics may provide enough specific knowledge and skills to lead students to make different choices in their adult roles as consumers workers and voters citizens of course the same could be claimed for training in business and other areas even though or perhaps because it could be argued that most content and training in business courses is more applied and pragmatic than what is presented in economics courses some empirical evidence though not really a great deal suggests that training in economics and business is associated with different adult behaviors and outcomes for example golec 1996 finds that mutual funds perform better if mutual fund managers have an mba and chevalier and ellison 1999 also report a positive correlation between mutual fund performance and the educational background of mutual fund managers black sanders and taylor 2003 found that economics majors earn almost 20 more than graduates in other social science majors and about 10 more than those who major in business administration in fields with large numbers of graduates they find that only engineering majors earn more than economics majors similarly hecker 1995 reported that males majoring in economics had median earnings 3 higher than all majors for the age cohort of 25 34 and 53 more than average for the cohort aged 35 44 craft and baker 2003 find that lawyers with an undergraduate major in economics earn 13 more than otherwise comparable lawyers with other undergraduate majors and economics is the only major with a statistically significant effect on earnings 1 hamermesh and donald 2008 however find that higher earnings by economics majors are partly due to economics majors working more hours than others the relationship between financial literacy knowledge and adult behavior and outcomes in financial markets has been addressed in several recent studies many sponsored by federal reserve banks hilgert hogarth and beverly 2003 and braunstein and welch 2002 find that knowledge about credit saving and investment is significantly related to recommended financial practices in cash flow management credit management saving and investment unfortunately there is also evidence of widespread financial illiteracy in u s households and particularly among elderly women see lusardi and mitchell 2007 2008 employee education programs have been found to affect workers savings retirement and investment behaviors bayer bernheim and scholz 2009 bernheim and garret 2003 state mandates for precollege education in personal finance appear to succeed in at least exposing students to more information and sources on financial education and students from states with such mandates report higher levels of savings and net worth as adults bernheim garrett and maki 2001 tennyson and nguyen 2001 much less research exists linking college coursework or majoring in economics to personal finance outcomes 2 but christiansen joensen and rangvid 2008 find that those trained in economics in college courses or employee education programs are more likely to invest in stocks than those who receive training in other areas guiso and jappelli 2005 report that among college graduates having a degree in economics is positively associated with knowledge about financial assets chert and volpe 1998 107 concluded that business majors had better knowledge about personal financial literacy than other students but that in general college students were not knowledgeable about personal finance 3 in this paper we use a large and unique data set to investigate the relationships between taking college coursework in economics or majoring in economics with long term labor market and personal finance behaviors and outcomes our information on long term behaviors and outcomes is drawn from a detailed questionnaire we mailed in january 2003 to over 25 000 graduates who attended four public universities in 1976 1986 or 1996

do online homework tools improve student results in principles of microeconomics courses recent technological advances in education have made it possible for instructors to use new tools in their attempt to enhance student interest and improve understanding of economic principles a substantial body of economic education literature has examined the effectiveness of these tools in influencing student performance generally these studies compare student performance between a control group and a test group in the last decade or so these new tools have tended to focus on different aspects of computer technology and whether or not use of the technology enhances student learning along these lines agarwal and day 1998 found that use of the internet in economics instruction had a positive effect on student learning as measured by improvement in the test of understanding in college economics tuce scores in both graduate and undergraduate economics courses similarly sosin et al 2004 suggest that tuce scores of students in classes using extensive technology showed a small but significant improvement over those students in classes using little technology this paper contributes to and extends the literature by reporting the results of an empirical study investigating the effect on student learning of an online homework tool aplia compared to the more traditional instructor assigned and graded homework do online homework tools improve student results in principles of microeconomics courses

use it or lose it teaching literacy in the economics principles course americans know little about economics recent surveys document shocking gaps in understanding of markets macroeconomic policy and the economics of government both the general public and college students including economics course takers do poorly on questions that check their knowledge in a gallup survey william b walstad and max larsen 1992 most knew that competitive prices are determined by supply and demand but 65 percent of the public and 43 percent of college seniors believed that during a crisis in the middle east government should prohibit oil companies from raising prices p 65 in a harris poll parade magazine 1999 only 58 percent of adults knew that people are likely to respond to a doubling in the relative price of beef by buying more poultry and less beef only one in three understood that those who borrow money at a fixed interest rate are most likely to benefit from inflation in a minneapolis federal reserve survey david fettig 1998 only 30 percent knew that government could reduce high inflation by decreasing spending and the money supply taking a high school or college economics course has little impact on economic understanding walstad and ken rebeck 2002 in a 15 question gallup survey of college seniors college economics course takers scored 9 highschool economics course takers scored 8 and those who took no economics scored 7 walstad and sam allgood 1999 there is hope test takers do better with questions that concern their day to day lives louis harris and associates 1999 and adults believe economics is important 88 percent want politicians to have a good understanding of economics and 96 percent think that basic economics should be taught in high school harris and associates 1999 while objections can be raised about what questions were asked and how they were worded national surveys administered by several respected firms support the same conclusion americans know little about economics

on the analysis of asymmetric first price auctions we provide a new set of tools for studying asymmetric rst price auctions connecting their equilibria to the concavity of the underlying type distributions and showing how one can use surplus expressions related to symmetric auctions to bound equilibrium behavior in asymmetric auctions we apply these tools to studying procurement auctions in which as is common in practice one seller is given an advantage re ecting for example better reliability or quality we show conditions under which for any given rst price handicap auction there is a second price auction with bonuses that outperforms it with most of our results involving ex post dominance

efficiency in the use of technology in economic education some preliminary results this paper reports preliminary results of a project funded by the andrew f mellon foundation that is intended to ascertain whether technology enhanced introductory economics courses are more effective and also more efficient than traditionally taught courses blecha s 2000 survey of faculty at different types of institutions of higher education documents that economics instructors now use a continuum of technological enhancements ranging from e mail web sites presentation software computerized games and spreadsheets to computerized instruction and distance learning while several studies investigate the consequences of using technology on student performance there has been little attempt to compare the efficacy and efficiency of the various types of available technologies

institutions of higher education as multi product firms economies of scale and scope a multiple output cost function is estimated for institutions of higher education in the united states employing data for 1981 82 the authors flexible fixed cost quadratic function includes three outputs undergraduate teaching graduate teaching and research grants and one input price average faculty salaries results indicate the existence of scope economies at least up to a point for both public and private institutions of higher education ray economies of scale are more pronounced in the private sector and product specific economies of scale are observed only in the public sector for research and graduate teaching copyright 1989 by mit press

semiparametric estimation of selection models some empirical results among the central theoretical developments in the econometric analysis of nonexperimental microeconomic data has been the analysis of selectivity bias following the work of james heckman 1974 statistical techniques were developed in the 1970s to consistently estimate the parameters of these models one potential drawback to the application of these techniques is their sensitivity to the assumed parametric distribution of the unobservable error terms in the model in recent years a number of estimation methods for selection models have been developed which do not impose parametric forms on error distributions these methods are termed semiparametric since only part of the model of interest the regression function is parametrically specified while the statistical theory of these semiparametric estimators has received much attention practical applications of the methods are lacking an exception being the paper by joel horowitz and george neumann 1987 in this paper we use semiparametric methods to reanalyze data on the labor supply of married women first studied by thomas mroz 1987 using parametric methods the object of this reanalysis is to determine whether mroz s results are sensitive to his parametric assumptions

the economic reward for studying economics undergraduate advisors in economics departments suggest that the study of economics is good preparation for a variety of careers including economics consulting analysis and administration and they argue that economics is a solid prelaw or pre mba major in this article we provide some empirical evidence about each of these contentions we find that among college graduates who do not earn advanced degrees economics majors generally earn more than similar individuals with other majors we show also that among individuals who pursue graduate degree programs in business and law economics majors earn more than undergraduate majors in most other academic disciplines jel j31

the lake wobegon effect in student self reported data for over a decade garrison keillor assured listeners of american public radio s a prairie home companion that in lake wobegon all the women are strong all the men are good looking and all the children are above average judith yaross lee 1991 although we can offer no explanation for the women s strength and men s appearance we may be able to shed light on the reports of exceptional achievement of lake wobegon s children our research indicates that students tend to overstate their academic accomplishments and that belowaverage students are less likely to report their achievements at all this produces a lake wobegon effect in student selfreported data overstated achievement may produce biased estimates of the relationship between achievement and educational inputs if overstatement is correlated with achievement in economic education the use of student self reported data for empirical analysis is not uncommon both the national assessment of economic education data base and the third edition of the test of understanding in college economic data base use some self reported data in addition some economic education researchers develop their own data sets that include student self reported data systematic reporting biases in data collection also create problems for empirical analysis nonrandom reporting has been documented as a potential problem in economic education students are more likely to report grading errors on examinations when the correction of these errors results in raising their grades dale 0 cloninger and robert hodgin 1986 sample selection bias resulting from using an unrepresentative sample has been shown to result from data lost between pretests and posttests william e becker and william b walstad 1990 students failure to take standardized tests claude montmarquette and rachel houle 1986 and selection procedures used to place students in experimental and control groups john j siegfried and george h sweeney 1980

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

revenues and welfare in auctions with information release abstract this paper studies information release in symmetric independent private value auctions with multiple objects and unit demand we compare effects on welfare to those on the seller s revenue applying the dispersive order the previous literature could only identify settings in which welfare provides the stronger incentives for information release we generalize the dispersive order to k and k m dispersion these new criteria allow us to systematically characterize situations in which revenue provides stronger incentives than welfare and vice versa k m dispersion leads to a complete classification if signal spaces are finite and sufficiently many bidders take part

education and saving the long term effects of high school financial curriculum mandates abstract over the last 40 years a majority of states have adopted consumer education policies and a sizable minority have mandated that high school students receive instruction on topics related to household financial decision making in this paper we attempt to determine whether these mandates have had any effect on subsequent decisions we exploit the variation in requirements both across states and over time to identify the effects of interest the evidence indicates that mandates have raised both exposure to financial curricula and subsequent asset accumulation once exposed students reached adulthood the estimated effects are gradual probably due to implementation lags

is there a consensus among economists in the 1990 s in a 1976 survey kearl et al 1979 hereafter the 1976 survey concluded that the then widespread perception that there was little agreement among professional economists on matters of theory or policy was simply wrong however the most casual empiricism namely the continuing popularity of jokes about disagreements among economists suggests the perception of noneconomists has not changed much since the 1970 s what is the present state of consensus among economists this question is of interest because more than a decade has elapsed since the 1976 survey and during this time many issues confronting economists and the composition of the profession have changed 1 benjamin m friedman and lawrence h summers 1991 p ix for example have asserted that economic thinking in many subfields of the discipline now differs markedly from what it was in 1970 consensus among european economists has been examined by bruno s frey et al 1984 martin ricketts and edward shoesmith 1990 1992 focus exclusively on british economic opinion this paper provides the first general analysis of opinions of u s economists in more than a decade i the survey and questionnaire

planning and financial literacy how do women fare many older us households have done little or no planning for retirement and there is a substantial population that seems to undersave for retirement of particular concern is the relative position of older women who are more vulnerable to old age poverty due to their longer longevity this paper uses data from a special module we devised on planning and financial literacy in the 2004 health and retirement study it shows that women display much lower levels of financial literacy than the older population as a whole in addition women who are less financially literate are also less likely to plan for retirement and be successful planners these findings have important implications for policy and for programs aimed at fostering financial security at older ages

the effect of gender and race on student performance in principles of economics the importance of personality type do women and minorities perform more poorly in economics courses than their white male counterparts there are a number of studies that indicate that they do siegfried 1979 ferber et al 1983 lumsden and scott 1987 gohmann and specter 1989 watts and lynch 1989 anderson et al 1994 in addition there are some studies that indicate that students personality types adversely affect their performance in economics courses as well borg and shapiro 1996 zeigert 2000 however no one has yet studied how a student s personality type combines with race and gender to affect performance in economics courses to explore this issue this study tests for the statistical significance of a number of interaction effects between race and gender and the kiersey bates temperament types in an ordered probit model explaining a student s grade in principles of macroeconomics it is concluded that race and gender do matter in a student s performance in principles of macroeconomics but not in a simple direc

market structure in the production of economics ph d s a century ago economics began to develop as a separate and significant part of the curriculum in american colleges and universities along with increased popularity and enrollment came the need for faculty specifically trained in economics a number of american scholars turned to europe germany in particular for their training and brought the german ph d back as a model for graduate education the first economics ph d s earned in this country were awarded by harvard 1875 yale 1877 and johns hopkins 1878 1 these first ph d s were two year degrees by 1900 economists had generally upgraded the ph d to three years beyond the baccalaureate degree consisting of two years of course work and another year for the dissertation graduate classes were taught in seminar format with considerable interaction between professors and students as the production process matured dissertations became longer more sophisticated and more specialized i e they were no longer the mark of a cultured gentleman but the demonstration of a professional skill 15 11 the newly formed american economic association began to keep track of doctoral candidates in economics in 1904 6 in 1904 there were 8 institutions which reported having men working on ph d s and by 1928 that number had increased to 27 2 while the american economic association did not tabulate the output of completed ph d s the national research council has compiled a database containing the number of ph d s by institution by year since 1920 their survey of earned doctorates indicates that 22 ph d s were awarded in economics by 6 different universities in 1920 by 1992 that number had grown to 910 ph d s from 123 different institutions

measuring the effect of blended learning evidence from a selective liberal arts college abstract we compare introductory microeconomics courses that employ a blended learning approach to more traditional control courses at a selective liberal arts college the blended learning courses

the effects of financial education in the workplace evidence from a survey of households abstract we use a novel household survey to investigate the effects of employer based financial education on personal saving we explore cross sectional relations between the availability of employer based financial education and various measures of asset accumulation and we interpret these patterns in light of various potentially confounding factors our findings favor the hypothesis that employer based financial education stimulates saving both in general and for retirement

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

supplying information to facilitate price discrimination the authors examine the incentive of a seller to allow potential buyers to acquire private information about their tastes for the seller s product improved private information for buyers enables the seller to segment the market and charge higher prices to high value buyers however improved information can also provide rents to buyers in a variety of settings this tradeoff is optimally resolved at one of two extremes either buyers are supplied with the best available knowledge of their tastes or no information is supplied by the seller copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

some lasting effects of undergraduate economics on retirement planning this study investigated the likely effects of undergraduate economics on whether a college graduate has opened a retirement account four years after graduation economic education is measured by the number of economics credit hours or whether a college graduate had majored in economics additional control variables for the logit analyses include occupation differences employment record and some demographics completing an undergraduate course in economics is significantly associated with having a retirement account and economics majors are more likely than some other majors to have a retirement account the analysis uses college transcript data from the baccalaureate and beyond study nces ed gov surveys b b

chalk and talk a national survey on teaching undergraduate economics reports on the desirable goals and characteristics of economics programs and reforms proposed to attain such programs e g w lee hansen 1991 hirschel kasper et al 1991 have ignored the issue of how economics is to be taught that is surprising because several popular trade books have recently appeared condemning teaching practices at american colleges and universities some of these books were written by economists e g martin anderson s 1992 impostors in the temple and used economics courses as notable examples of these problems long before these reports and books appeared the national council on economic education ncee together with the american economic association s aea committee on economic education began sponsoring programs to improve the teaching of economics and to promote innovative teaching methods in becker and watts 1995 we describe many of these improvements and explain how economists could use alternative teaching methods in different undergraduate courses until now however we could not provide data on how widely those approaches were used we do that here based on responses to a national survey

the awarding of phds in the united states and canada war the draft and other economic determinants this article is concerned with the awarding of phds in the usa and canada in the post ww ii period overall by gender and major academic discipline the effects of the explanatory variables lagged by 6 years to allow for time to degree completion are consistent with the model military conscription with educational exemptions and the vietnam war increased male phds in the usa but as expected had no effect for us females or in canada this suggests that the war and draft effect for us males were not reflecting other unmeasured north american effects government expenditures on research and development enhanced the phd production especially for males and in the physical sciences the cyclical indicator the adult male unemployment rate has a weak positive effect for males in both the usa and canada suggesting that during the post ww ii period the positive effect on graduate level education of the reduced opportunity cost of time due to a recession was stronger than the negative wealth effect of th

stressed out on four continents time crunch or yuppie kvetch social commentators have pointed to the problems of citizens of industrialized countries especially working women who face time stress an absence of sufficient time to accomplish all their tasks an economic theory views time stress as an increasing function of the shadow price of time and suggests it will be more prevalent in households with higher incomes and whose members work longer in the market or on required homework evidence from microeconomic data sets for australia germany korea and the united states corroborates this view adults in higher income households perceive more time stress in the united states a move from the 25 th to the 75 th percentile of the income distribution raises time stress by half as much as an interquartile change in weekly market work the relative effects of increased income compared to increased market work are larger in germany smaller in australia and roughly the same in korea time stress is part time crunch but much is also part yuppie kvetch

individual account investment options and portfolio choice behavioral lessons from 401 k plans abstract this paper examines how the menu of investment options made available to workers in defined contribution plans influences portfolio choice using unique panel data of 401 k plans in the u s we present three principle findings first we show that the share of investment options in a particular asset class i e company stock equities fixed income and balanced funds has a significant effect on aggregate participant portfolio allocations across these asset classes second we document that the vast majority of the new funds added to 401 k plans are high cost actively managed equity funds as opposed to lower cost equity index funds third because the average share of assets invested in low cost equity index funds declines with an increase in the number of options average portfolio expenses increase and average portfolio performance is thus depressed all of these findings are obtained from a panel data set enabling us to control for heterogeneity in the investment preferences of workers across firms and across time

can web courses replace the classroom in principles of microeconomics the proliferation of economics courses offered partly or completely online arnold katz and william e becker 1999 raises important questions about the effects of the new technologies on student learning do students enrolled in online courses learn more or less than students taught face to face can we identify any student characteristics such as gender race act scores or grade averages that are associated with better outcomes in one technology or another how would the online or face to face students fare if they had taken the course using the alternative technology this paper addresses these questions using student data from our principles of microeconomics courses at michigan state university

teaching economics at the start of the 21st century still chalk and talk in spring 2000 we conducted a national survey of academic economists to determine how economics is taught in four different types of undergraduate courses principles intermediate theory statistics and econometrics and other upper division courses at institutions in the five carnegie classifications research doctoral master s baccalaureate and associate as listed in a classification of institutions of higher education 1994 edition this new survey replicates our 1995 survey becker and watts 1996 therefore we can compare the results from the two surveys to document changes in teaching methods as well as the related academic issues that were addressed in the background information section of the surveys a key reason for believing that teaching methods might have changed during this period was the sharp decrease in economics enrollments during the early 1990 s becker 1997 john siegfried and david k round 2001 as we have documented elsewhere becker and watts 1998 there is evidence that economists are less likely to use non lecture teaching methods than instructors in other fields and that students rate economics instructors somewhat lower than they rate other instructors changing teaching methods and increasing the importance of teaching within economics departments in response to falling enrollments is therefore a plausible and endogenous response for faculty members and departments concerned about losing resources furthermore there is at least circumstantial evidence that economists are devoting more attention to teaching than in the recent past becker 2000 since our 1995 survey several books have been published to illustrate how economists can use a wide range of alternative teaching methods in undergraduate courses e g becker and watts 1998 william walstad and philip saunders 1998 other books have appeared focusing on specific teaching methods such as using classroom experiments spreadsheet applications or active learning and cooperative learning assignments e g diane keenan and mark h maier 1995 tod s porter and teresa riley 1995 theodore bergstrom and john h miller 1997 denise hazlett 1999 becker 2000 documents the increase in aea sessions devoted to teaching economics at the annual meetings of the allied social sciences association during the mid 1990 s at the 1998 2000 allied social sciences association assa meetings the number of sessions devoted to teaching economics ranged from 11 to 14 and presented sessions dealt with such topics as teaching economics in the transition economies chaired by world bank chief economist joseph stiglitz a retrospective on nobel laureate paul samuelson s principles textbook how faculty advisors can deal with student apprehensiveness about taking economics courses and teaching business economics chaired by nobel laureate ronald coase as recently as the 1996 assa meetings in san francisco there were only six sessions on teaching economics and at the 1994 meetings in boston there were only four such sessions similarly small numbers of sessions were scheduled through the 1980 s here we ask whether any increased emphasis on teaching in economics departments has led to changes in how economics is taught do academic economists report that they are now becker department of economics indiana university bloomington in 47405 e mail beckerw indiana edu and adjunct professor school of international business university of south australia watts department of economics purdue university west lafayette in 47905 e mail bfp mgmt purdue edu we thank julia k huffer kevin m green siddhartha kapoor chatchai meteveravong alexandre skiba and suzanne becker for help in the mailing data entry and tabulation and preparing of this paper financial support from the purdue university center for international business education and research university of south australia school of international business and the national council on economic education through its sponsorship of the journal of economic education is gratefully acknowledged

valuing primary schools in urban china abstract we study the effect of school quality on housing prices in urban china our objective is to provide an estimate of the school quality premium based on the best available data to account for unobserved neighborhood characteristics we adopt the boundary discontinuity design of black 1999 and the matching strategy proposed by fack and grenet 2010 the results suggest that parents value public primary schools that have outstanding records in academic tournaments the school quality premium is highly non linear while a tournament superstar a school above the 90th percentile in tournament performance causes housing prices in its neighborhood to increase by 14 percent or about 430 000 rmb the price difference between non superstar schools is small

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

accountability and flexibility in public schools evidence from boston s charters and pilots charter schools are publicly funded but operate outside the regulatory framework and collective bargaining agreements characteristic of traditional public schools in return for this freedom charter schools are subject to heightened accountability this paper estimates the impact of charter school attendance on student achievement using data from boston where charter schools enroll a growing share of students we also evaluate an alternative to the charter model boston s pilot schools these schools have some of the independence of charter schools but operate within the school district face little risk of closure and are covered by many of same collective bargaining provisions as traditional public schools estimates using student assignment lotteries show large and significant test score gains for charter lottery winners in middle and high school in contrast lottery based estimates for pilot schools are small and mostly insignificant the large positive lottery based estimates for charter schools are similar to estimates constructed using statistical controls in the same sample but larger than those using statistical controls in a wider sample of schools the latter are still substantial however the estimates for pilot schools are smaller and more variable than those for charters with some significant negative effects

what students remember and say about college economics years later in his presidential address to the american economic association george stigler 1963 offered the provocative hypothesis that students would retain very little knowledge from principles courses in economics five years or more after taking the courses the few empirical studies that have been published on this topic generally found no or small lasting effects at least for those who took fewer than four courses see e g g l bach and phillip saunders 1965 gerald j lynch 1990 that raises even broader questions about the long term effects of studying economics in college in terms of individuals behavior as consumers workers and voters which we are now beginning to investigate using both survey and transcript data we have two major goals in this study first we want to learn how students perceive their classroom experience in economics courses years after leaving school both in absolute terms and compared to other courses they took we drew samples of economics business and other majors who attended our four universities in 1976 1986 and 1996 and asked which topics regularly covered in economics courses they now viewed as being most and least important we asked whether they now viewed the economics courses they took as interesting important too difficult or too abstract we also compared their perceptions of teaching methods and grading rigor in economics courses to those developed in other courses our second major goal represents an empirical test of the common claim that economics is a unique way of thinking if it is we might reasonably expect people with more training in economics to have different views on policy issues and to make different decisions as consumers workers savers investors and voters we collected survey data on many of these choices and by matching those responses with transcript data we plan to investigate whether there are observable behavioral responses associated with being an economics major or simply taking some minimum number of economics courses compared to students who took fewer courses or none at all there are other uses for these data they can likely be used to study choice of major and course taking behavior as well as common laboreconomics issues such as human capital versus screening in the labor market certainly the data can provide insight into curriculum development for economics departments and business schools as well there is obviously the potential for response biases in the analysis of these data but we expect that having transcript data for respondents and nonrespondents will allow us to deal with these issues econometrically this first brief report from this ongoing project addresses only the first goal of the project specifically how our former students evaluate their experience with economics courses and instructors what economic courses and concepts do they now believe are most important do they wish they had taken more or less coursework in economics what do they think now about various economic issues and allgood department of economics university of nebraska lincoln ne 68588 e mail sallgood unlnotes unl edu bosshardt department of economics florida atlantic university boca raton fl 33431 e mail wbosshar fau edu van der klaauw department of economics university of north carolina chapel hill nc 27599 e mail vanderkl email unc edu watts department of economics purdue university west lafayette in 47907 and while this paper was written the german international school of management and administration hanover germany e mail mwatts mgmt purdue edu we thank the board of the calvin k kazanjian economics foundation for the grant that made this work possible and the aea committee for economic education for bringing us together to write the proposal as described in michael salemi et al 2002 mike salemi provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper april fidler provided major assistance in project coordination administration and data entry georg schaur worked extensively with data organization and preliminary tabulations

changes in college skills and the rise in the college wage premium the college wage premium for new labor market entrants rose sharply during the 1980s we ask how much of this change arose from changes in the skill level of the typical college graduate we find that skills attained prior to college as measured by standardized test scores and high school grades had no effect on the change in the college wage premium for men in contrast the returns to math ability rose considerably for women failing to account for math skills thus substantially overstates the growth in the female college wage premium skills acquired in college as reflected in the distribution of students across majors had important effects on the relative wages of men the trend away from low skill subjects such as education and toward high skill subjects such as engineering accounts for one fourth of the rise in the male college wage premium

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

revenue equivalence in multi object auctions abstract the theory of auctions suggests that under certain conditions seemingly different methods for auctioning a single object will result in the same expected price this result extends quite easily to the case of more than one object

choosing between risky prospects the characterization of comparative statics results and location independent risk we consider expected utility maximizers choosing from a family of risky prospects and examine how choice is influenced by the decision makers attitude to risk if the family of risky prospects can be ordered so that as decision makers are more risk tolerant they choose a gamble higher in the ordering then it is natural to say that the family of risky prospects admit a comparative static result the paper characterizes when comparative static results of this sort exist an application is to propose a criterion of location independent riskiness

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

research in economic education five new initiatives research is essential for improvement in teaching and learning economics william e becker et al 1991 called for new research on the relative merits of multiple choice and essay tests on the lasting effects of course work in economics and on the effects of instructors instructional techniques and new technologies on student learning to respond to the call the committee on economic education cee of the american economic association recruited robin bartlett william becker w lee hansen peter kennedy and the authors to organize a conference that would jump start new research projects the organizers chose three conference goals identifying research priorities recruiting new economists to economic education research and building teams to undertake identified priorities they recruited 21 economists to participate 1 provided them with a list of potential research questions and asked them which questions were most important and which they were willing to work on with survey results in hand the organizers divided participants into five teams corresponding to the following five topics teaching methods and incentives for collegelevel economics instruction ph d education in economics in the united states improving the assessment of student learning in college economics courses long term effects of learning economics and efficiency in the use of technology in economic education at the conference participants discussed briefing papers prepared for each topic worked on project design and funding issues and began writing proposals herein we describe our research priorities and our progress in developing research plans and securing financial support

survive then thrive determinants of success in the economics ph d program this study investigates the completion of the ph d in economics we use ex ante information based upon reviewing individual applications from former doctoral students students need different skills to succeed at each distinct stage of the doctoral program significant determinants for passing the comprehensive exams include graduate record exam gre verbal and quantitative scores a masters degree and prior focus on economics by contrast research motivation and math preparation play significant roles in completing the dissertation gre scores become insignificant for completion in the generalized ordered logit estimates which emphasize the sequential nature of the economics ph d program jel i210 i introduction every spring admission committees review a pile of applications to select candidates for their ph d programs beyond normal attrition economics departments clearly have a stake in seeing a significant proportion of students finish the program aside from whatever resources may accrue todepartmentswith high completion rates they receive prestige from the placement and success of their completed ph d students in academic institutions or private sector jobs obtaining a ph d in economics requires clearing a series of distinct hurdles and constitutes a riskier venture than attending medical school an mba program

the effects of financial education in the workplace evidence from a survey of employers we examine the effects of education on financial decision making skills by identifying an interesting source of variation in pertinent training during the 1990s an increasing number of individuals were exposed to programs of financial education provided by their employers if as some have argued low saving frequently results from a failure to appreciate economic vulnerabilities then education of this form could prove to have a powerful effect on behavior the current paper undertakes an analysis of these programs using a previously unexploited survey of employers we find that both participation in and contributions to voluntary savings plans are significantly higher when employers offer retirement seminars the effect is typically much stronger for non highly compensated employees than for highly compensated employees the frequency of seminars emerges as a particularly important correlate of behavior we are unable to detect any effects of written materials such as newsletters and summary plan descriptions regardless of frequency we also present evidence on other determinants of plan activity