community size and network closure large community size is often negatively correlated with prosocial behaviors such as formal volunteering working on public projects and informal help to friends and strangers robert d putnam 2000 119 206 this may be because people who reside in large communities simply spend less time socializing with each other as a result people living in large cities have on average fewer friends and their social networks support less cooperation a complementary channel which has received less attention in the literature is that community size may affect outcomes by changing other aspects of the network structure specifically even holding fixed the number of friends we expect social networks in small communities to exhibit greater network closure i e be more interconnected the intuition is straightforward in small communities the pool of potential friends is limited which increases the extent to which the network neighborhoods of two friends are likely to overlap james s coleman 1990 suggested that variation in network closure can affect outcomes in particular he argued that networks with higher closure generate high trust between friends which facilitates cooperation and improves welfare the logic is that networks with high closure allow for greater social sanctions between

an engineering economic approach to estimating the price elasticity of residential electricity demand abstract this paper develops separate methods for projecting short and long run electricity demand the short run econometric analysis accounts explicitly for weather sensitive appliances and distinguishes these from non weather sensitive appliances the long run analysis combines the econometric approach with an engineering accounting approach unlike pure econometric approaches it is able to identify the effect of sharp price increases on electricity demand it treats total price elasticity as the sum of a utilization elasticity and a long run stock adjustment using utility specific data we obtain elasticity estimates at the low end of the range of previous estimates

income inequality and growth does the relationship vary with the income level abstract for three different specifications of a cross country growth model the coefficient of initial income inequality is remarkably similar for high and low income countries contrary to some recent suggestions in the literature but varies markedly across models

inequality in the globalizing asia this article investigates the impact of globalization on the inequality of asia it is the first attempt to examine 11 asian countries panel data allowing nonlinearity between globalization and inequality from 1960 to 2003 with robustness check we also survey the literature on growth globalization and inequality and reflect their endogenous relationships to our article we found the significant turning point of globalization at which inequality starts decreasing as further globalization proceeds it will offer us policy implications for the ongoing process of globalization in the asian economies

household production and the short and long run demand for electricity this paper deals with the residential demand for electricity a theoretical model is formulated which is based on intertemporal optimization in a household production context the model is estimated using a dynamic version of the pls partial least squares approach most important determinants of electricity consumption are the prices of appliances and of those goods which can either be purchased in the market or produced at home the dynamic interrelationship between capital stock and electricity consumption is also an important element of the estimated model

class size education and wages we use micro data for england and wales to examine the effects of class size on the decision to stay on in full time schooling at 16 and on wages later in life we find that class size has a sizeable and significant effect on the decision to stay on this finding is very robust wage equations show the effect of staying on is significantly positive for wages combining this with the effect of class size on the staying on decision reveals that class size significantly affects future wages reduced form models lead to much less accurate and insignificant estimates

using maimonides rule to estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement the twelfth century rabbinic scholar maimonides proposed a maximum class size of 40 this same maximum induces a nonlinear and nonmonotonic relationship between grade enrollment and class size in israeli public schools today maimonides rule of 40 is used here to construct instrumental variables estimates of effects of class size on test scores the resulting identiecation strategy can be viewed as an application of donald campbell s regression discontinuity design to the class size question the estimates show that reducing class size induces a signiecant and substantial increase in test scores for fourth and efth graders although not for third graders when asked about their views on class size in surveys parents and teachers generally report that they prefer smaller classes this may be because those involved with teaching believe that smaller classes promote student learning or simply because smaller classes offer a more pleasant environment for the pupils and teachers who are in them mueller chase and walden 1988 social scientists and school administrators also have a longstanding interest in the class size question class size is often thought to be easier to manipulate than other school inputs and it is a variable at the heart of policy debates on school quality and the allocation of school resources in many countries see e g robinson 1990 for the united states ofsted 1995 for the united kingdom and moshel ravid 1995 for israel this broad interest in the consequences of changing class size

greek membership and academic performance evidence from student level data abstractcompared to other inputs of the education production function less is known about the effect of social and non classroom choices this study examines whether joining fraternities and sororities improves academic performance in order to account for the self selection bias of greek membership i exploit plausibly exogenous cross class variation in greek student composition at the course instructor level my estimate shows that a 10 percentage point increase in greek student composition translates to a 0 02 standard deviation increase in course grade for greek students relative to non greek students i further find that this effect is driven largely by low achieving and middle achieving white greek members

a model of residential demand for electricity using a national household sample abstract using a three equation model demand price appliance stock index and a current national household data set this study develops partial and total elasticity estimates for the usa partial elasticities are 0 102 for income and 0 193 for price while total elasticities are 0 410 for income and 1 403 for price

how vouchers could change the market for education small probability that vouchers will in the foreseeable future be adopted on a large scale in any school district or state at the moment only three states have adopted publicly funded voucher programs and all of these programs are limited in scale nonetheless in recent years over 40 state legislatures have considered proposals to provide some type of voucher program or tuition tax credit for at least some families in a given state or school district and the children s scholarship fund see http www scholarshipfund org has helped create or expand privately funded voucher programs in numerous cities as vouchers become a more significant part of education policy debates the time is right to consider what we know and do not know about the likely effects of adopting various voucher schemes in the balance of this paper i describe both empirical and theoretical work on education that speaks to this topic i argue that we cannot confidently predict the outcomes that would result from various voucher schemes and i also stress that debates over vouchers per se are not informative details concerning funding targeting and discretion in the use of vouchers should greatly affect the outcomes associated with any particular voucher program still empirical evidence on the performance of public versus private schools as well as numerical results from existing simulation models suggest that policymakers should be able to design voucher programs that would be helpful to minority students in large cities public schools in large cities often perform poorly in minority neighborhoods and this is especially true in economically disadvantaged areas

home versus school learning a new approach to estimating the effect of class size on achievement i estimate the effect of class size on scholastic achievement using that schools are only in session during the school year and out of session during the summer this seasonal feature of the schooling system makes it possible to control for unobservable pupil characteristics affecting both the level and change in achievement using swedish data i find that smaller classes generate higher achievement a comparison with the results from applying the same data to the widely used value added model is also made

long term effects of class size this article evaluates the long term effects of class size in primary school we use rich data from sweden and exploit variation in class size created by a maximum class size rule smaller classes in the last three years of primary school age 10 to 13 are beneficial for cognitive and noncognitive ability at age 13 and improve achievement at age 16 most important we find that smaller classes have positive effects on completed education wages and earnings at age 27 to 42 the estimated wage effect is large enough to pass a cost benefit test

public spending on education and the incentives for student achievement we build a model where homogeneous workers can accumulate human capital by investing in education schools combine public resources and individual effort to generate productive skills if skills are imperfectly compensated then in equilibrium students may under invest in effort we examine the effect on human capital accumulation of three basic education finance policies increased tuition subsidies may not be beneficial because they increase enrolment but they may lower the incentives for student achievement hence the skill level policies directed at enhancing the productivity of education or making degrees more informative are more successful at improving educational outcomes

the reliability of aggregate energy demand functions an application of statistical specification error tests abstract the paper examines the unbiasedness and efficiency of various energy elasticity estimates by means of statistical specification error tests the model selection procedure is applied to energy consumption data of eight industrialized countries it is found that models which describe dynamic behaviour by including the lagged dependent variable among the regressors are most frequently accepted and that long term income effects are important for all countries strong differences among countries prevail concerning the appropriateness of including a time trend elasticities derived from accepted models differ considerably among countries

measuring investment in education historic debates about the measurement of capital are even more complicated in the case of education and human capital as extensive research demonstrates education resources are not consistently related to student performance in existing elementary and secondary schools this inefficiency in public schools implies that spending and resource measures do not accurately capture variations in school quality this finding then has clear implications for both education policy and economic research because school inputs are poor policy instruments an alternative policy focus that appears much more productive is performance incentives related to student achievement

party politics governors and economic policy in this article we evaluate the role of elections in governors state tax policy making does it matter for state taxes whether the governor is a democrat or republican and whether she is eligible for re election or faces a binding term limit using a regression discontinuity design and a panel of u s states we find that the manner in which governors of different parties implement different tax policies turns crucially on the incumbent s eligibility for re election re electable democratic governors increase income taxes relative to similarly situated republicans yielding divergence between party policy positions however governors facing a binding term limit exhibit the reverse policy difference resulting in a movement of policy back together

structural changes in residential energy demand abstract residential energy consumers in the usa faced several demand shocks in the 1970s and 1980s these included price rises engineered by the organization of petroleum exporting countries natural gas curtailments shortages of petroleum products and deregulation of energy markets one result of these events has been structural change in the demand for electricity and petroleum by residential consumers demand functions are now more responsive to price changes and consumers react more quickly in adjusting their capital stocks to new levels

price sensitivity of residential energy consumption in norway abstract the main aim of this paper is to test the stability of the results of a model which focus on the relationship between the choice of heating equipment and the residential energy consumption the results for the income and energy price variables are of special interest stability in the time dimension is tested by applying the model on micro data for each of the years 1993 1995 the parameter estimates are stable within a 95 confidence interval however the estimated impact of the energy price variable on energy consumption was considerably weaker in 1994 than in 1993 and 1995 the results for two different income groups in the pooled data set are also subject to stability testing the energy price sensitivity in residential energy consumption is found to be higher for high income households than for low income households

lifeline electricity rates as an income transfer device the lifeline electricity rates are presumed to be inefficient because they violate optimal pricing principles but they may also be an ineffective and inequitable way to transfer assistance to low income households evidence is presented to challenge the assumption that simple demand changes will permit high consuming households to subsidize low income users social security food stamps and other social programs are better alternatives to a general income transfer 7 references 2 tables dck

social spillovers in the classroom identification estimation and policy analysis i present a method to jointly estimate social spillovers in the classroom and the distributions of teacher and student effects this method is based on the covariance and higher order moments restrictions of the test scores requiring the random assignment of teachers and students to classrooms using the tennessee project star dataset i estimate sizeable spillovers in kindergarten classrooms and departures from normality of the teacher and student ability distributions the estimates also show that reducing class size has a positive effect on mean performance but it increases the inequality based on these estimates i perform several input neutral policy counterfactuals involving teachers and students assignment rules and changing the distribution of class sizes for the latter i derive an optimal class size distribution rule which increases mean test scores and reduces the overall variance

social interaction effects in disability pension participation evidence from plant downsizing we estimate the magnitude of social interaction effects in disability pension participation among older workers in norway the problem of omitted variable bias is addressed using the exposure of an individual s neighbors to plant downsizing events as an instrument for the disability entry rate among the individual s previously employed neighbors our instrumental variable iv estimates suggest that an increase of one percentage point in the participation rate of previously employed neighbors increased the subsequent four year entry rate of older workers by about 0 4 percentage points numerous robustness and specification tests appear to support the validity of the identifying assumption in our iv strategy

socioeconomic development and electricity consumption a cross country analysis using the random coefficient method this paper analyses the relationship between electricity consumption and socioeconomic variables by estimating the electricity consumption function on the basis of single year cross country data and using ols and random coefficient rc methods the latter method yields both mean response as well as country specific coefficients while electricity consumption is found to rise with socioeconomic development it is found to be inelastic with respect to changes in all the variables the estimated country specific coefficients with respect to per capita gnp and share of industry in gdp are found not to vary across countries indicating that the impact of these variables on electricity consumption is similar across countries on the other hand the impact of other variables years of schooling gdp growth urbanization and population density is found to vary substantially across countries

determinants of residential space heating expenditures in germany abstract we first examine the determinants of household expenditures on space heating and hot water supply in germany a number of socio economic characteristics of households are included along with building characteristics our analysis covers information on more than 12 000 households in germany for the years 1998 and 2003 the analysis continues by investigating whether different kinds of households are affected differently by increases in energy prices households in owner occupied properties are less affected compared to those in rented accommodation this could be because owners are more likely to have installed energy efficient heating and hot water supply systems and landlords have less of an incentive to improve the conditions of their rented accommodations an energy policy targeting especially the latter group might benefit not only households in rented accommodation but might also increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well

do parties matter for economic outcomes a regression discontinuity approach a long standing issue in political economics is to what extent party control makes a difference in determining fiscal and economics policies this question is very difficult to answer empirically because parties are not randomly selected to govern political entities this article uses a regression discontinuity design namely party control changes discontinuously at 50 of the vote share which can produce near experimental causal estimates of the effect of party control on economic outcomes the method is applied to a large panel data set from swedish local governments with a number of attractive features the results show that there is an economically significant party effect left wing governments spend and tax 2 3 more than right wing governments left wing governments also have 7 lower unemployment rates which is partly due to that left wing governments employ 4 more workers than right wing governments jel c21 d72 d78 h71 h72

teacher experience and the class size effect experimental evidence abstract we analyze teacher experience as a moderating factor for the effect of class size reduction on student achievement in the early grades using data from the tennessee star experiment with random assignment of teachers and students to classes of different sizes the analysis is motivated by the high costs of class size reductions and the need to identify the circumstances under which this investment is most rewarding we find a class size effect only for senior teachers the effect exists at all deciles of the achievement distribution but is less pronounced at lower deciles we further show that senior teachers outperform rookies only in small classes interestingly the class size effect is likely due to a higher quality of instruction in small classes

human capital and the reduction of inequalities an intra national analysis in italy human capital is a fundamental economic resource in the knowledge economy era and improvements in education are usually associated with both economic development and the reduction of inequality i

the credibility revolution in empirical economics how better research design is taking the con out of econometrics since edward leamer s memorable 1983 paper let s take the con out of econometrics empirical microeconomics has experienced a credibility revolution while leamer s suggested remedy sensitivity analysis has played a role in this we argue that the primary engine driving improvement has been a focus on the quality of empirical research designs the advantages of a good research design are perhaps most easily apparent in research using random assignment we begin with an overview of leamer s 1983 critique and his proposed remedies we then turn to the key factors we see contributing to improved empirical work including the availability of more and better data along with advances in theoretical econometric understanding but especially the fact that research design has moved front and center in much of empirical micro we offer a brief digression into macroeconomics and industrial organization where progress by our lights is less dramatic although there is work in both fields that we find encouraging finally we discuss the view that the design pendulum has swung too far critics of design driven studies argue that in pursuit of clean and credible research designs researchers seek good answers instead of good questions we briefly respond to this concern which worries us little

a national micro data based model of residential electricity demand new evidence on seasonal variation building on earlier estimates of electricity demand the author estimates elasticities by month to determine differences between heating and cooling seasons he develops a three equation model of residential electricity demand that includes all the main components of economic theory the model generates seasonal elasticity estimates that generally support economic theory based on the model using a national current household data set monthly division the evidence indicates there is a seasonal pattern for price elasticity of demand while less pronounced there also appears to be seasonal patterns for cross price elasticity of alternative fuels for the elasticity of appliance stock index and for an intensity of use variable

comparing school ownership performance using a pseudo panel database a malmquist type index approach in this paper we propose a different way of using the malmquist index that allows us to further analyze the relative performance divergences between two groups of decision making units dmus over time when only a pseudo panel database is available to do this we extend the camanho and dyson 2006 one period malmquist type index cdmi for a pseudo panel database with a new pseudo panel malmquist index ppmi to illustrate the methodology we apply it to examine how the performance gap between public and private government dependent secondary schools in the basque country spain performed across three pisa waves 2006 2009 and 2012 the results suggest that performance is persistently and significantly higher for private government dependent schools than for public schools

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

long term impacts of class size in compulsory school how does class size in compulsory school affect people s long run education and earnings we use maximum class size rules and norwegian administrative registries allowing us to observe outcomes up to age 48 we do not find any indication of beneficial effects of class size reduction in compulsory school for a one person reduction in class size we reject effects on income as small as 0 12 percent in primary school and 0 15 percent in middle school population differences in parental background school size or competitive pressure do not appear to reconcile our findings with previous studies

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

a new data set measuring income inequality this article presents a new data set on inequality in the distribution of income the authors explain the criteria they applied in selecting data on gini coefficients and on individual quintile groups income shares comparison of the new data set with existing compilations reveals that the data assembled here represent an improvement in quality and a significant expansion in coverage although differences in the definition of the underlying data might still affect inter temporal and international comparability based on this new data set the authors do not find a systematic link between growth and changes in aggregate inequality they do find a strong positive relationship between growth and reduction of poverty

public schooling college subsidies and growth abstract how does the mix of public education expenditures across primary and secondary k 12 education and post secondary college education influence economic growth to address this i build an overlapping generations endogenous growth model human capital is accumulated through compulsory k 12 education and through optional college education government uses tax revenue to provide quality in k 12 schooling and to subsidize college tuition when total expenditures are small all funds should provide k 12 quality when expenditures are above a critical value a positive share should subsidize tuition the share should increase with total expenditures and with the degree of complementarity of human capital accumulated through the two types of education also increased education spending is more likely to increase growth when a larger share subsidizes tuition

quasi experimental estimates of the effect of class size on achievement in norway using a comprehensive norwegian administrative database we exploit independent quasi experimental methods to estimate the effect of class size on student achievement at the end of lower secondary school identification based on maximum class size rules and population variation and variations on these methods give very similar estimates we cannot reject that the class size effect is equal to zero and can rule out effects as small as 1 5 percent of a standard deviation for a one student change in class size during three consecutive years

the failure of input based schooling policies in an effort to improve the quality of schools governments around the world have dramatically increased the resources devoted to them by concentrating on inputs and ignoring the incentives within schools the resources have yielded little in the way of general improvement in student achievement this paper provides a review of the us and international evidence on the effectiveness of such input policies it then contrasts the impact of resources with that of variations in teacher quality that are not systematically related to school resources finally alternative performance incentive policies are described

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

peer effects in program participation the influence of peers could play an important role in the take up of social programs however estimating peer effects has proven challenging given the problems of reflection correlated unobservables and endogenous group membership we overcome these identification issues in the context of paid paternity leave in norway using a regression discontinuity design our approach differs from existing literature which attempts to measure peer effects by exploiting random assignment to peer groups in contrast we study peer effects in naturally occurring peer groups but exploit random variation in the price of a social program for a subset of individuals fathers of children born after april 1 1993 in norway were eligible for one month of governmental paid paternity leave while fathers of children born before this cutoff were not there is a sharp increase in fathers taking paternity leave immediately after the reform with take up rising from 3 to 35 while this quasirandom variation changed the cost of paternity leave for some fathers and not others it did not directly affect the cost for the father s coworkers or brothers therefore any effect on the brother or the coworker can be attributed to the influence of the peer father in their network our key findings on peer effects are four fold first we find strong evidence for substantial peer effects of program participation in both workplace and family networks coworkers and brothers are 11 and 15 percentage points respectively more likely to take paternity leave if their peer father was induced to take up leave by the reform second the most likely mechanism is information transmission about costs and benefits including increased knowledge of how an employer will react third there is essential heterogeneity in the size of the peer effect depending on the strength of ties between peers highlighting the importance of duration intensity and frequency of social interactions fourth the estimated peer effect gets amplified over time with each subsequent birth exhibiting a snowball effect as the original peer father s influence cascades through a firm our findings demonstrate that peer effects can lead to long run equilibrium participation rates which are substantially higher than would otherwise be expected

can the kuznets effect be relied on to induce equalizing growth abstract the use of internationally comparable income data to test kuznet s inverted u hypothesis introduces several econometric problems this study a explains and corrects for these econometric problems b assesses the sensitivity of estimated results to alternative functional specifications and sample variations c provides a more rigorous test for structural change between more and less developed countries in the phasing of the inequality trend and d estimates the time likely to elapse before various of the developing countries reach the turning point the study s findings offer broad support for kuznets s hypothesis but do not support the advocacy of development policies focused exclusively on growth for low income countries growth s equalizing phase cannot be anticipated to set in for half a century

how large are the effects from changes in family environment a study of korean american adoptees i analyze a new set of data on korean american adoptees who were quasi randomly assigned to adoptive families i find large effects on adoptees education income and health from assignment to parents with more education and from assignment to smaller families parental education and family size are significantly more correlated with adoptee outcomes than are parental income or neighborhood characteristics outcomes such as drinking smoking and the selectivity of college attended are more determined by nurture than is educational attainment using the standard behavioral genetics variance decomposition i find that shared family environment explains 14 percent of the variation in educational attainment 35 percent ofthe variation in college selectivity and 33 percent of the variation in drinking behavior

class size teacher hours and educational attainment we employ a regression discontinuity design to identify effects on educational attainment after compulsory school of class size and the number of pupils per weekly teacher hour using administrative rules as instruments we use danish administrative panel data average class size is 20 about the same as in the us and most european countries restricting the sample to observations close to the enrolment discontinuity points where the administrative rules have greatest predictive power instrumental variables estimates are consistently negative estimates from the preferred specification are marginally significant and indicate modest effects in line with earlier studies estimates for subgroups are less precise but they indicate larger effects for pupils from less advantaged backgrounds

does the size of the legislature affect the size of government evidence from two natural experiments this paper makes use of regression discontinuity designs to estimate the effect of the number of legislators on the size of government the results indicate a negative effect i e the larger the size of the legislature the smaller is the size of government this runs counter to conventional wisdom one potential explanation is that more legislators can better control a budget maximizing bureaucracy i present evidence that is consistent with the proposed mechanism

do gasoline demand elasticities vary this paper answers questions concerning gasoline demand elasticity by analyzing periods that span both increasing and decreasing prices focusing on consumer decisions about the distance driven and the automobile size us data show that efficiency changes and reduced mileages account equally for short run elasticities while automobile efficiency accounts for 90 in the long run the analysis shows a consistency that makes it useful in projecting elasticities during market disruptions and over a broad span of economic conditions in other countries 38 references dck

appliance specific electricity consumption in slovene households abstract on the basis of a national household survey carried out in 1983 this study presents estimates of electricity use per appliance our estimates of electricity use for space heating water heating and cooking are considerably lower than the engineering estimates the estimates for other electricity using appliances broadly conform with engineering estimates our low estimate of the short run income elasticity is in close agreement with other studies

residential demand for fuelwood this is the first national microbased study of residential demand for wood as fuel the data are from the us department of energy residential energy consumption survey the model employs a somewhat unique interaction dummy for price that allows the simultaneity problem to be adjusted for in a 2sls format and then the interaction term to be calculated and entered in the second stage results are compared with elasticity estimates derived from the same data set for the four other main residential fuels wood has a price elasticity of 0 421 for main users

lifeline electricity rates as an income transfer device comment the authors question the supporting evidence given in an earlier paper by burgess and paglin eapa 7 4039 they suggest using the national interim energy consumption survey niecs as an alternative base and present a new set of equations to validate the income elasticity of demand in the justification of lifeline rates burgess and paglin reply noting that garbacz s study raises questions about a national requirement for lifeline rates 4 references 5 tables dck

school characteristics and teacher turnover assessing the role of preferences and opportunities job characteristics can affect worker turnover through their effect on utility and through their effect on outside job opportunities the aim of this study is to identify and estimate the roles of these two channels separately our method exploits information on job changes and relies on an augmented sample selection correction to illustrate our approach we use an exhaustive register of dutch primary school teachers and show a detailed picture of preferences for school characteristics we also find that the dependence between current and outside job attributes can affect turnover and thus the allocation of teachers across schools

electricity consumption and economic growth in jamaica abstract this study examines the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in jamaica during 1970 86 a period of rapid increase in energy prices the results show that the aggregate demand for electricity is slightly income elastic electricity has a significant impact on economic growth the electricity intensity has increased over time residential demand is fairly income elastic commercial demand is price inelastic and the rate of adjustment is slow these results suggest that conservation policies could be ineffective therefore indigenous sources of electricity are important for jamaica to be less dependent on imported energy

if you pay peanuts do you get monkeys a cross country analysis of teacher pay and pupil performance why are teachers paid up to four times as much in some countries compared to others and does it matter specifically is the quality of teachers likely to be higher if they are paid higher up the income distribution in their own country and are pupil outcomes influenced by how well their teachers are paid this paper considers the determinants of teachers salaries across countries and examines the relationship between the real and relative level of teacher remuneration and the internationally comparable measured performance of secondary school pupils we use aggregate panel data on 39 countries published by the oecd to model this association our results suggest that recruiting higher ability individuals into teaching and permitting scope for quicker salary advancement will have a positive effect on pupil outcomes

on the variable elasticity of the demand for gasoline the case of the usa this paper tests the variable elasticity of the demand for gasoline by applying the well known box cox extended autoregressive bcea model of savin and white this model can simultaneously test for functional form and autocorrelation in a time series regression major findings are the log linear form chosen a priori in most of previous studies can be rejected in favour of the bcea model long run price elasticities varied from 1 118 in 1973 to 0 290 in 1981 and long run income elasticities declined consistently from 0 944 in 1960 to 0 452 in 1985 these findings have policy implications for more accurate forecast of gasoline demand gasoline taxes energy conservation and others

intra school competition and student achievement within the economics of education literature numerous studies have investigated the relationship between educational market competition and educational achievement educational market competition has been defined as either the availability of vouchers within a community or the number of schools or school districts within the relevant market structure while these studies have shown that increases in inter district competition result in increased student achievement no studies to our knowledge have yet investigated the effect of intra school competition on student achievement within this study a measure of intra school competition is developed and the findings indicate that increased intra school competition leads to increased student achievement

electricity policies for low income households this paper discusses the implications of restructuring the u s electricity industry for low income energy policy and low income households the paper discusses the historical development of existing low income energy policies and programs federal policy has focused primarily on addressing the heating needs of low income customers state policy has traditionally vested the vertically integrated utility with much of the responsibility to provide energy programs to low income customers the paper considers how industry restructuring may affect the appropriateness of these policies and programs the paper describes new policies to provide low income electricity services that could be developed in parallel with broader industry restructuring efforts

immigrating to opportunity estimating the effect of school quality using a natural experiment on ethiopians in israel in may 1991 fifteen thousand ethiopian jews were brought to israel in an overnight airlift and sorted in a haphazard and essentially random fashion to absorption centers across the country this quasi random assignment produced a natural experiment whereby the initial schooling environment of ethiopian children can be considered exogenous to their family background and parental decisions we examine the extent to which the initial elementary school environment affected the high school outcomes of ethiopian children using administrative panel data on the educational career of each child in israel through much of the 1990s the results show that the early schooling environment has an important effect on high school dropout rates repetition rates and the passing rate on matriculation exams necessary to enter college the results are robust to using alternative measures of the schooling environment and to the inclusion of community fixed effects which suggests that aspects of the elementary school itself are important for high school success

residential energy demand additional empirical evidence by minority household type abstract in a number of recent studies household level data for specific urban areas or national household level micro data have been used to estimate price and income elasticities of energy demand none of this literature however provides us with elasticity estimates by minority majority household type the main focus of this paper is to measure the responsiveness of the quantity of electricity and total energy demanded for black hispanis and majority households to price and income price and income elasticities are compared among these groups over the short and long term a variable elasticity demand model is estimated the elasticities are allowed to vary with respect to non price and income variables the price elasticities of demand vary with heating and cooling degree days and the income elasticities with the number of household members mean estimates were calculated over the respective samples findings indicate that demand for electricity is relatively price inelastic irrespective of household group however blacks are more sensitive to variations in the short run to price than hispanic and majority households in the long run blacks are also more sensitive to price changes but the magnitude of the response to price changes in the long run relative to the short run is larger for hispanics and majority households respectively than for blacks

level of development rate of economic growth and income inequality most of the research mentioned above focused on estimating the relation between the level of economic development usually proxied by real gross domestic product gdp per capita and income inequality so as to judge whether an inverted u pattern is observed however notwithstanding the potential significance of the kuznets paradigm it should be evident that level of development or income is just one determinant of income inequality and that rate of economic growth is another important and related factor nevertheless very few studies have investigated how the rate of growth is related with inequality at various levels of development or income except perhaps incidentally and through an additive growth term in kuznets type models of inequality even the studies that did consider the growth inequality nexus have reported somewhat contradictory results for example an additive gdp growth term in m ahluwalia s regression estimates indicated a statistically insignificant equalizing effect of growth and in a later work he noted that

do businessmen make good governors this paper evaluates the economic performance of u s state governors with a business background chief executive officer ceo governors applying a matching method i find first that businesspeople tend to take office in times of economic and fiscal strain second the tenures of ceo governors are associated with a 0 5 percentage points pp higher annual income growth rate a 0 4 pp higher growth rate of the private capital stock and a 0 6 pp lower unemployment rate than are the tenures of non ceo governors state level income inequality is not affected by ceo governors holding office indicating that low income households benefit from the economic upswing

residential demand for electricity the case of greece this paper examines the determinants of residential electricity consumption in greece over the period 1961 86 the paper presents first a brief description of the evolution of residential electricity consumption then it proceeds in the estimation of elasticities of residential demand for electricity using a single equation model with the ridge regression method the paper concludes that i the residential demand for electricity is price inelastic and income elastic ii there is high substitutability between electricity and lpg iii during the examined period the number of consumers played a very important role in the expansion of electricity consumption in greece and iv there is no regional variation in residential electricity demand

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

better late than nothing some comments on deaton 2009 and heckman and urzua 2009 two recent papers deaton 2009 and heckman and urzua 2009 argue against what they see as an excessive and inappropriate use of experimental and quasi experimental methods in empirical work in economics in the last decade they specifically question the increased use of instrumental variables and natural experiments in labor economics and of randomized experiments in development economics in these comments i will make the case that this move towards shoring up the internal validity of estimates and towards clarifying the description of the population these estimates are relevant for has been important and beneficial in increasing the credibility of empirical work in economics i also address some other concerns raised by the deaton and heckman urzua papers

misery loves company social regret and social interaction effects in choices under risk and uncertainty abstract extensive field evidence shows individuals decisions in settings involving uncertainty depend on their peers decisions one hypothesized cause of peer group effects is social interaction effects an individual s utility from an action is enhanced by others taking the same action we employ a series of controlled laboratory experiments to study the causes of peer effects in choice under uncertainty we find strong peer group effects in the laboratory our design allows us to rule out social learning social norms group affiliation and complementarities as possible causes for the observed peer group effects leaving social interaction effects as the likely cause we use a combination of theory and empirical analysis to show that preferences including social regret are more consistent with the data than preferences including a taste for conformity we observe spillover effects as observing another s choice of one risky gamble makes all risky gambles more likely to be chosen

short run residential demand for fuels a disaggregated approach a disaggregated model of residential energy demand is specified and then used to examine the data and econometric techniques available to estimate such a model inconsistencies in the currently popular random effects model and weighted least squares generate inconsistent parameter estimates for short run modeling some of the currently available pooled data is of poor quality the principal data series of concern are the appliance stock series but current research is attempting to improve aggregate data while the disaggregated elasticities reported can only be considered tentative the approach combined with better data and econometric techniques will produce an important policy tool the regression results are summarized in two tables in the appendix 42 references 5 tables

electoral thresholds and political representation we rely on a reform in the german federal state of hesse that abolished a 5 electoral threshold for local elections to study the effects of electoral thresholds on political representation the elimination of the threshold had on average a stronger effect on municipalities with larger councils since implicit also known as effective electoral thresholds are inversely correlated with council size using a dataset that includes all 426 hessian municipalities over the period 1989 2011 and exploiting discontinuities in a state law that maps populations exogenously to council size we implement a difference in discontinuities design our results show that the reform had large psychological effects that eventually improved the electoral prospects of relatively small local parties in the short run however the vote and seat shares of the large national parties increased we offer some explanations for this finding

the distributional effects of early school stratification non parametric evidence from germany whether early school stratification is conducive or detrimental to scholastic performance has been subject to controversial debates in educational policy and science across many countries we exploit a unique exogenous variation in lower saxony germany where performance based tracking was preponed from grade 7 to grade 5 in 2004 i e with the completion of primary school in particular we measure the long run effects of this reform on pisa achievement test scores based on a difference in differences setup in order to disentangle average from distributional achievement effects we complementarily rely on a changes in changes framework our results indicate that preponed school tracking increased test scores at the upper tail of the skill distribution and lowered test scores at the lower tail of the skill distribution compensating each other on average

identity and schooling some lessons for the economics of education abstract this review culls noneconomic literature on education by sociologists anthropologists and practitioners to present a new economic theory of students and schools this theory elaborates two themes that have eluded economic analysis first is the student as decision maker whose primary motivation is her identity second is a conception of the school as a social institution this framework suggests a new perspective on questions such as resource allocation and school reform it explains why some educational policies succeed and others fail we show how sociological variables may affect outcomes and suggest ways economists can incorporate them into theoretical and empirical research

income distribution and development some stylized facts in recent years the relationship between income distribution and the process of development has come under increasing scrutiny much of the debate has focused on the hypothesis originally advanced by simon kuznets that the secular behavior of inequality follows an inverted u shaped pattern with inequality first increasing and then decreasing with development this hypothesis has become so much a part of the conventional wisdom on this subject that it has generated considerable skepticism about the welfare implications of the development process indeed on some interpretations developing countries face the grim prospect not just of increasing relative inequality but also of declining absolute incomes for the lower income groups

disruption versus tiebout improvement the costs and benefits of switching schools most students change schools at some point in their academic careers but some change very frequently and some schools experience a great deal of turnover while many argue that mobility harms students economists tend to emphasize tiebout type moves to procure better school quality sq this paper disentangles the disruption effects of moves from changes in sq importantly it identifies the negative externality movers impose on other students student turnover is shown to entail a substantial cost for movers and non movers alike this cost appears to be larger for lower income and minority students who typically attend much higher turnover schools

the effect of school closings on student achievement abstract many school districts across the country are shutting schools but school closing policies remain a very controversial issue the current study investigates the effects of school closing policies on student achievement by examining over 200 school closings in michigan relative to the previous literature the analysis uses a broader set of school closings to thoroughly investigate heterogeneity in treatment effects based on the performance level of the closed school the results indicate that on average school closings in michigan did no persistent harm to the achievement of displaced students moreover students displaced from relatively low performing schools experience achievement gains the displacement of students and teachers creates modest negative spillover effects on the receiving schools however hence the closing of low performing schools may generate some achievement gains for displaced students but not without imposing spillover effects on a large number of students in receiving schools

distributive politics and economic growth a crude distinction between economics and politics would be that economics is concerned with expanding the pie while politics is about distributing it in this paper we analyze the relationship between the two we focus on how an economy s initial configuration of resources shapes the political struggle for income and wealth distribution and how that in turn affects long run growth our main conclusion is that inequality is conducive to the adoption of growth retarding policies we derive this result from a simple political economy model of growth and present cross country evidence consistent with it the key feature of our model is that individuals differ in their relative factor endowments we distinguish between two types of factors an accumulated factor called capital and a nonaccumulated factor called labor growth is driven by the expansion of the capital stock which is in turn determined by individual saving decisions long run growth is endogenous as the aggregate production function is taken to be linearly homogeneous in capital and productive government services taken together the provision of government services is financed by a tax on capital because government services are productive a small tax on

preferences selection and value added a structural approach abstract what do applicants take into consideration when choosing a high school to what extent do schools contribute to their students academic success to answer these questions we model students preferences and obtain average valuation placed on each school we then investigate what drives these valuations by carefully controlling for endogeneity using a set of creative instruments suggested by our model we find that valuation is based on a school s location its selectivity as measured by its cutoff score value added and past performance in university entrance exams however cutoffs affect school valuation an order of magnitude more than does value added

does additional spending help urban schools an evaluation using boundary discontinuities this study exploits spatial anomalies in school funding policy in england to provide new evidence on the impact of resources on student achievement in urban areas anomalies arise because the funding allocated to local education authorities lea depends through a funding formula on the additional educational needs of its population and prices in the district however the money each school receives from its lea is not necessarily related to the school s own specific local conditions and constraints this implies that neighbouring schools with similar intakes operating in the same labour market facing similar prices but in different leas can receive very different incomes we find that these funding disparities give rise to sizeable differences in pupil attainment in national tests at the end of primary school showing that school resources have an important role to play in improving educational attainment especially for lower socio economic groups the design is geographical boundary discontinuity design which compares neighbouring schools matched on a proxy for additional educational needs of its students free school meal entitlement fsm in adjacent districts the key identification requirement is one of conditional ignorability of the level of lea grant where conditioning is on geographical location of schools and their proportion of fsm children

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

political alignment and intergovernmental transfers in parliamentary systems evidence from germany combining local council election data with fiscal data on grant allocations in a german state we study partisan favoritism in the allocation of intergovernmental transfers within a quasi experimental framework we hypothesize that state governments pursue two distinct goals when allocating grants to local governments 1 helping aligned local parties win the next election and 2 buying off unaligned municipalities that may obstruct the state government s policy agenda we argue furthermore that the relative importance of these two goals depends on local political conditions in line with this argument we show empirically that the effect of political alignment on grant receipts varies depending on the degree of local support for the state government while previous contributions find that aligned local governments always tend to receive larger transfers our results imply that the political economy of intergovernmental transfers is more intricate

the demand for electricity and natural gas in the northeastern united states the demand for natural gas and electricity for the residential commercial and industrial sectors was estimated using a combination of the error components model and seemingly unrelated regressions the estimated demand models showed both natural gas and electricity to be price elastic in the long run and price inelastic in the short run in all sectors except the commercial sector in which electricity demand is unresponsive to its own price natural gas had negligible income elasticities in the residential and commercial sectors and a long run income elasticity of 2 86 in the industrial sector electricity had an insignificant income effect in all sectors but the industrial where its long run elasticity was unitary only in the residential demand for natural gas is the cross price elasticity substantial with the price of electricity having a long run cross elasticity of 1 70 fuel oil prices generally had a negative impact probably indicating a large income effect the elasticities of adjustment were higher for natural gas than electricity indicating a faster adjustment to change either in response to greater instability in energy availability or reflecting more alternative fuels or both 16 references 4 tables

public funding for startups in argentina an impact evaluation a broad literature has found that the misallocation of entrepreneurial talent has strong effects on productivity to investigate whether the government can improve entrepreneurial activity we analyze a policy aimed at promoting innovative startups through the provision of funding and technical assistance to potential entrepreneurs in buenos aires argentina we conduct a survey and use regression discontinuity methods to identify the effects of the policy we find significant effects on enterprise creation and survival as well as on employment overall we show that small scale public policy can help entrepreneurs overcome a wide variety of barriers to firm entry and improve the allocation of their entrepreneurial talent

school governance teacher incentives and pupil teacher ratios experimental evidence from kenyan primary schools this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled school governance teacher incentives and pupil teacher ratios experimental evidence from kenyan primary schools conducted between 2005 and 2006 in kenya the study observed the impact of a program under which kenyan parent teacher associations ptas at randomly selected schools were funded to hire an additional teacher on a renewable contract outside normal ministry of education civil service channels at one quarter normal compensation levels on the student teacher and school level despite a dramatic reduction in class size the program generated little improvement for students who remained in the standard system civil service teachers were 13 points less likely to be found in class teaching if their school received funding to hire a contract teacher the program increased test scores by 28 percent of a standard deviation for those students assigned to pta contract teachers there is strong evidence that locally hired and monitored teachers had better incentives they were 15 percent more likely to be in class teaching during unannounced spot checks the school based management program had significant positive impacts on the tendency for civil service teachers to cut effort in response to introduction of a contract teacher funding for the study derived from the world bank government of netherlands