university competition grading standards and grade inflation we develop a model of strategic grade determination by universities distinguished by their distributions of student academic abilities universities choose grading standards to maximize total wages of graduates job placement and wages hinge on a firm s productivity assessment given a student s university grade and productivity signal we identify conditions under which better universities set lower grading standards exploiting the fact that firms cannot distinguish between good and bad a s in contrast a social planner sets stricter standards at better universities we show how increases in skilled jobs drive grade inflation and determine when grading standards fall faster at better schools

value based adaptation to climate change and divergent developmentalisms in turkish agriculture there is an increased recognition and attention on human values with respect to their role in shaping climate change adaptation policies furthermore as the recent literature suggests values held by policy actors are centrally located in the debates linking adaptation to development however different values tend to give way to diverging adaptation policy preferences which often appear as a dichotomy of adjustment incremental change versus transformation this study enquires the assumptions and values in adaptation policy by using q methodology and advances value based approach to adaptation policy with an empirical case from turkey a developing country with key vulnerabilities in its agricultural system by exploring the narratives of 29 policy actors who participated in the making of turkey s climate change adaptation strategy the analysis suggests that assumptions regarding an economic growth driven development agenda often shape adaptation concerns further analysis of the 4 emerging discourses productivism techno managerialism eco localism and authoritarianism suggests that while discourses agree that the ultimate goal of adaptation is safeguarding a developmentalist vision in agriculture they differ on the means and agents for reaching this goal i argue that this divergence can enhance the transformative potential of adaptation by bringing how for whom and why questions back to policymaking

the allocation of public funds in a hierarchical educational system abstract this paper studies the dynamic effects of allocating public funds between basic and advanced education holding the size of total public education funds fixed i identify the effects of their composition on aggregate efficiency and in equality first since basic education is a prerequisite for attending advanced education there exists a lower bound on funding it allocation policies below this lower bound are strictly pareto dominated whether a corresponding lower bound on funding advanced education exists or not depends on the development stage of the economy and the size of total public funds secondly while an allocation policy favoring basic education generates the usual redistribution from top to bottom one favoring advanced education may result in reverse redistribution from bottom to top last through the inter generational link short run allocation policies may have long run effects a simple rule of thumb is that for an economy in its early development stage focusing on basic education for sufficiently long duration is the only way out of polarization and low aggregate efficiency contrary to the actual policies pursued by many of the less developed economies

assessing students equality of opportunity in oecd countries the role of national and school level policies abstractthis article analyses the relationship between equality of opportunity and the characteristics of the educational system jointly considering country and school level policies because school social environment represents a fundamental channel in shaping educational opportunities we consider all policies recorded in pisa 2012 dataset that affect the sorting of students to schools we show that including sorting policies enriches the explanation of the socio economic gradient that is the association between students performances and parental background with respect to previous studies including only country level features the negative impact of early tracking on equality of opportunity is overvalued without including other sorting policies while grouping students within school by ability increases the socio economic gradient and a greater students heterogeneity in the school reduces the gradient

the wage expectations of european business and economics students expected earnings and expected returns to education are seen by labor economists as a major determinant of educational attainment in spite of this the empirical knowledge about expectations and their formation is scarce in this paper we report the results of the first systematic study of the wage expectations of european university students our data are based on a uniform questionnaire answered by about 3 000 business and economics university students across europe we study the determinants of wage expectations and expected employment probabilities the variability of these expectations and their variation across countries and universities we also examine the tradeoff between expected starting wages and expected wage growth

wage expectations of european college students expected earnings and expected returns to education are seen by labor economists as a major determinant of educational attainment in spite of this the empirical knowledge about expectations and their formation is scarce in this paper we report the results of the first systematic study of the wage expectations of european college students our data are based on the replies to the same questionnaire by more than 6000 college students all over europe we study the determinants of wage expectations and expected employment probabilities the variability of these expectations within a field of study and their variation across universities and fields we also examine the trade off between expected starting wages and wage growth in the final section of the paper we contrast expected returns to education with actual returns estimated from country specific micro data in line with u s studies we find that students overestimate returns to education jel j30

can student effort be manipulated does it matter this article provides evidence that college students effort can be manipulated substantially by making changes in the college testing regime and moreover that student effort is a meaningful input in education production the evidence comes from a quasi experiment where a mid semester test with a pass requirement is introduced to a mandatory one semester business school course in macroeconomics four cohorts of students one before and three after the introduction of the pass requirement have reported their study effort twice during the semester and the relationship between achievement and study effort is investigated by using a within subject within student across study periods approach

investment subsidies and regional welfare a dynamic framework and its application to the european regional policy this paper focuses on the question of the effectiveness of subsidies to private and public investment which are a key component of european regional policy given mixed findings from empirical stu

school heterogeneity human capital accumulation and standards abstract this paper examines the effects of heterogeneity in school quality on high school wages college enrolment rates and social surplus greater heterogeneity in school quality combined with pooling on the labor market for high school graduates is shown to result in lower average high school wages inefficient college going decisions and in some cases lower social surplus these effects of heterogeneity tend to be reinforced by technical change which raises the return to human capital technical change leads to bigger increases in the college high school wage ratio when there is more underlying heterogeneity in the school system performance standards implemented through the mandatory testing of all high school graduates are shown to raise average high school wages and social surplus by reducing the distortion in college going incentives

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

optimal higher education enrollment and productivity externalities in a two sector model abstract we analyze the optimal share of the skilled workforce over the course of development with two sectors using skilled and unskilled labor respectively and technological spillovers from higher education enrollment productivity in each sector depends on the average quality of workers and the size of the workforce when skill biased technological change prevails this structure of externalities coupled with the endogenous ability sorting of workers may well produce a pattern of overenrollment in early and late stages of development and underenrollment in between our normative analysis is followed by a positive analysis exploring how policy would differ under alternative political objectives

real costs of nominal grade inflation new evidence from student course evaluations college gpas in the united states rose substantially between the 1960 s and the 2000 s over the same period study time declined by almost a half this paper uses a 12 quarter panel of course evaluations from the university of california san diego to discern whether a link between grades and effort investment holds up in a micro setting results indicate that average study time would be about 50 lower in a class in which the average expected grade was an a than in the same course taught by the same instructor in which students expected a c simultaneity suggests estimates are biased toward zero findings do not appear to be driven primarily by the individual student s expected grade but by the average expected grade of others in the class class specific characteristics that generate low expected grades appear to produce higher effort choices evidence that nominal changes in grades may lead to real changes in effort investment

grade inflation social background and labour market matching a model is presented where workers of differing abilities and from different social backgrounds are assigned to jobs based on grades received at school it is examined how this matching is affected if good grades are granted to some low ability students such grade inflation is shown to reduce the aggregate wage of the lower class workers because employers use social origin as a signal for productivity if grades are less than fully informative moreover the high ability students from the higher class may benefit from grade inflation since this shields them from the competition on the part of able students from the lower classes

prosocial behavior private contributions to agriculture s impact on the environment private provision of public environmental benefits is considered with a theory of prosocial behavior that elaborates the roles of nonhedonistic values held by agents as well as the functional interaction between private good and public good production processes the theory also identifies the conditions under which public environmental goods will be privately supplied and motivates an empirical approach models of environmental effort in agriculture are estimated based on a survey of u s field crop farmers results confirm the role of hedonistic motivation of environmental effort and provide very weak evidence of a role of nonhedonistic values

non spatial government policies and regional income inequality in brazil silveira neto r da m and azzoni c r non spatial government policies and regional income inequality in brazil regional studies this paper uses both macro and micro data to analyse the role of social programmes in the recent reduction in brazilian regional income inequality convergence indicators are presented for different sources of regional income in the period 1995 2006 a decomposition of the gini indicator allows the identification of the role of each of these income sources with respect to the reduction of regional inequality during the period the results point out that both labour productivity and government non spatial policies mainly minimum wage changes and income transference programmes do have a role in explaining regional inequality reduction during the period silveira neto r da m et azzoni c r les politiques gouvernementales non spatiales et l ecart des revenus regionaux au bresil regional studies cet article emploie des donnees a la fois macroeconomiques et microeconomiqu

entry through the narrow door the costs of just failing high stakes exams abstract in many countries important thresholds in examinations act as a gateway to higher levels of education and or improved employment prospects this paper examines the consequences of just failing a particularly important high stakes national examination taken at the end of compulsory schooling in england it uses unique administrative data including full information on both initial and regraded exam marks to show that students of the same ability have significantly different educational trajectories depending on whether they just pass or fail this exam three years later students who just fail to achieve the required threshold have a lower probability of entering an upper secondary high level academic or vocational track and of starting tertiary education those who fail to pass the threshold are also more likely to drop out of education by age 18 without some form of employment the moderately high effects of just passing or failing to pass the threshold in this high stakes exam has high potential long term consequences for those affected

efficient tuition fees and examinations we assume that students observe only a private noisy signal of their ability and that universities can condition admission decisions on the results of noisy tests if the university observes a private signal of each student s ability which is soft information then asymmetries of information are two sided and the optimal admission policy involves a mix of pricing and pre entry selection based on the university s private information in contrast if all test results are public knowledge then there is no sorting on the basis of test scores tuition alone does the job of implementing an optimal degree of student self selection these results do not depend on the existence of peer effects the optimal tuition follows a classic marginal social cost pricing rule jel d82 h42 i22 j24

do high grading standards affect student performance abstract this paper explores the effects of high grading standards on student test performance in elementary school while high standards have been advocated by policy makers business groups and teacher unions very little is known about their effects on outcomes most of the existing research on standards is theoretical generally finding that standards have mixed effects on students however very little empirical work has to date been completed on this topic this paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of grading standards measured at the teacher level using an exceptionally rich set of data including every third fourth and fifth grader in a large school district over four years we match students test score gains and disciplinary problems to teacher level grading standards in models in which we control for student level fixed effects we find substantial evidence that higher grading standards benefit students and that the magnitudes of these effects depend on the match between the student and the classroom while dynamic selection and mean reversion complicate the estimated effects of grading standards they tend to lead to understated effects of standards

endogenous determination of public budget allocation across education stages abstract this paper studies the endogenous determination of public budget allocation across hierarchical education stages in less developed economies the top class has dominant political power to implement its most preferred policy which is characterized by exclusive participation and large schooling expenditure at higher education at the expense of basic education in developed economies the budget allocation is more balanced under certain parameters it leads to expanded participation of the middle class in higher education the model offers an explanation to the observed cross country policy difference and is broadly consistent with historical evidence

the social multiplier aggregate data is often used to make inferences about individual level behavior if there are social interactions in which one person s actions influence his neighbor s incentives or information then these inferences are inappropriate the presence of positive social interactions or strategic complementarities implies the existence of a social multiplier where aggregate relationships will overstate individual elasticities we present a brief model and then estimate the size of the social multiplier in three areas the impact of education on wages the impact of demographics on crime and group membership among dartmouth roommates in these contexts there is a significant social multiplier jel ho jo co

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

the effects of an anti grade inflation policy at wellesley college abstract average grades in colleges and universities have risen markedly since the 1960s critics express concern that grade inflation erodes incentives for students to learn gives students emplo

academic admissions standards implications for output distribution and mobility we examine the trade offs implicit in academic admissions standards when students are charged cost based tuition and offered loans that remove liquidity constraints lowering entry requirements while holding graduation requirements fixed increases aggregate output and promotes a more equal distribution of wages but reduces relative income mobility and diminishes the scope for affirmative action lowering admissions standards while raising graduation requirements so that the number of graduates remains constant has little direct effect on output distribution or mobility but again reduces the scope for affirmative action income based affirmative action offers a better trade off between output and relative mobility than income neutral admissions jel d31 h42 i23 i28 j24

can centralized educational standards raise welfare abstract i examine conditions under which centralized educational standards raise welfare compared to decentralization in this model a uniform centralized standard only raises welfare when there is excessive cross district pooling of graduates by employers high cross district heterogeneity of students and high degrees of egalitarianism can surprisingly favor centralization in other cases centralization can lower standards in all districts including the weakest the cross district patterns of winners and losers among high and low achievers depend crucially on the degree of cross district pooling finally i show that centralized standards with a local option to set higher standards are always welfare improving

exploring environmental perspectives in lowland agriculture a q methodology study in east anglia uk abstract the role of agriculture in rural areas is changing significantly in europe with environmental protection and enhancement and provision of amenity and recreation increasingly emphasized both in public debate and in new policy initiatives faced by these shifting priorities it is increasing important to understand how farmers themselves perceive their roles in relation to environmental management in particular as recent research in new institutional economics has shown frey b s 1997 not just for the money edward elgar cheltenham policy assumptions and instruments that are at odds with the underlying motivations of agents may actually reduce achievement of policy objectives if they act to degrade beneficial norms or alter the basis on which agents make choices understanding how farmers conceive of their environmental rights and responsibilities is therefore important in helping to design agri environmental measures that can complement rather than conflict with the underlying normative assumptions that farmers themselves hold this study employs q methodology to investigate the perceptual frameworks of a sample of uk arable and mixed lowland farmers regarding the appropriate way in which to approach the environmental management of agricultural land the q analysis identifies five distinct perspectives on notions of agricultural stewardship we term these environmentalists progressives commodity conservationists jeffersonians and yeomen we discuss the main characteristics of these groups and comment on these results in the context of current uk agri environmental policy which is changing both the presumptions of farmers entitlements to agricultural payments and the expectations pertaining to farmers in relation to environmental responsibilities in conclusion we suggest that q methodology can be a valuable way of demonstrating the nature of the mental frameworks of actors in a particular context and this enables us to formulate some important questions regarding the motivations of land managers in the context of a rapidly changing rural policy

structuring investment and regional inequalities in the brazilian northeast abstractstructuring investment and regional inequalities in the brazilian northeast regional studies this paper evaluates the long run regional impacts of the construction of three oil refineries proposed for brazil s northeast ne region a dynamic interregional computable general equilibrium cge model was developed with 28 regions in the ne and the rest of brazil and 30 sectors the database construction methodology could be applied to any other country the main results of the refinery investment simulations in the ne indicate positive impacts in all regions however the construction and operation of these three refineries would generate an increase in intraregional inequalities on the other hand in the long run these investments could contribute to the ne gaining an increased relative share of brazilian gross domestic product gdp

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

a simple model of educational standards the author models standards for educational credentials such as high school diplomas standard setters maximize their conception of social welfare knowing that utility maximizing students choose whether to meet the standard the author shows that more egalitarian policymakers set lower standards the median voter would prefer higher standards under symmetric distributions and decentralization lowers standards among identical communities optimal standards do not necessarily fall with increased student preference for leisure deterioration of nonstudent inputs to education or increased student heterogeneity superseding binary credentials by perfect information increases average achievement and social welfare for plausible degrees of heterogeneity egalitarianism and pooling under decentralization