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Economics

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Full-Text Articles in Education

Must Economics Always Determine Academic Destiny? Achievement Across Time In Two Academically Equivalent But Socioeconomically Diverse Same City Catholic Schools, Roseanne L. Williby, John W. Hill Apr 2012

Must Economics Always Determine Academic Destiny? Achievement Across Time In Two Academically Equivalent But Socioeconomically Diverse Same City Catholic Schools, Roseanne L. Williby, John W. Hill

John W. Hill

The study analyzed the pretest-posttest results of high stakes test scores, absence frequencies, and high school eligibility cut scores of students who completed fourth-grade through eighth-grades in two academically equivalent but socioeconomically diverse same city Catholic schools. Study outcomes were compared for a naturally formed group of students (n = 28) who had completed fourth-grade through eighth-grades in an urban Catholic school representing fewer family socioeconomic advantages and 40% eligibility for free and reduced price lunch program participation and tuition assistance and a randomly selected group of students (n = 28) completing fourth-grade through eighth-grades in a suburban Catholic school …


Community Based Research-Vancouver Rent Bank, Nisha Malhotra Jan 2012

Community Based Research-Vancouver Rent Bank, Nisha Malhotra

Nisha Malhotra

As part of UBC’s initiative to facilitate community-based learning, this course gave students the option of participating in a research project that helps a non-profit organization gain better understanding of a specific issue. Whereas most undergraduate economic curricula focus on theory or data analysis, Community-Based Research (CBR) lets students use their theoretical knowledge and analytical skills to help people in their own community


Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz Jan 2011

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …


The Intersection Of Judicial Attitudes And Litigant Selection Theories: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making, Jeff L. Yates, Elizabeth Coggins Jan 2009

The Intersection Of Judicial Attitudes And Litigant Selection Theories: Explaining U.S. Supreme Court Decision Making, Jeff L. Yates, Elizabeth Coggins

Jeff L Yates

Two prominent theories of legal decision making provide seemingly contradictory explanations for judicial outcomes. In political science, the Attitudinal Model suggests that judicial outcomes are driven by judges' sincere policy preferences -- judges bring their ideological inclinations to the decision making process and their case outcome choices largely reflect these policy preferences. In contrast, in the law and economics literature, Priest and Klein's well-known Selection Hypothesis posits that court outcomes are largely driven by the litigants' strategic choices in the selection of cases for formal dispute or adjudication -- forward thinking litigants settle cases where potential judicial outcomes are readily …


Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz Jan 1993

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …