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Education Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2015

Selected Works

Higher education

Labor Economics

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Education

Higher Education And Income Distribution In A Less Developed Country, Gary S. Fields Sep 2015

Higher Education And Income Distribution In A Less Developed Country, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] The primary purpose of this paper is to empirically test among both the intra- and the inter-generational version of these three hypotheses for higher (i.e. post-secondary) levels of education for one less developed country, Kenya. A secondary purpose is to investigate other economic aspects of spending on higher education, most notably the question of horizontal equity in school finance. Before proceeding, a methodological point is in order. There is no consensus in the public economics literature on what is a suitable criterion for assessing the equitability of a fiscal programme. At least three criteria may be distinguished (the terminology …


Private Returns And Social Equity In The Financing Of Higher Education, Gary S. Fields Sep 2015

Private Returns And Social Equity In The Financing Of Higher Education, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] A widespread phenomenon in developing countries has been the rapid growth of schools and institutions of higher learning resulting in a so-called ‘education explosion’. One possible explanation for the education explosion is that education is a profitable personal investment, as evidenced by high private rates of return. The high private returns are translated into demands on politicians for additional schooling spaces. To gain or maintain public favour, each politician uses his influence to try to increase the number of schools in his constituency. By this chain of events, growth of educational systems might be anticipated as long as private …


Increasing The Economic Development Benefits Of Higher Education In Michigan, Timothy J. Bartik Jan 2015

Increasing The Economic Development Benefits Of Higher Education In Michigan, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

This paper considers how a state such as Michigan can increase the economic development benefits of higher education. Research evidence suggests that higher education increases local economic development principally by increasing the quality of the local workforce, and secondarily by increasing local innovative ideas. These economic development benefits of higher education can be increased by: 1) competent management of conventional economic development programs that focus on business attraction and retention; 2) policies that focus on increasing local job skills by educating the state's residents, as opposed to attracting in-migrants; 3) policies that address specific "market failures" in how higher education …


Postsecondary Education As Triage: Returns To Academic And Technical Programs, Kevin Hollenbeck Jan 2015

Postsecondary Education As Triage: Returns To Academic And Technical Programs, Kevin Hollenbeck

Kevin Hollenbeck

This paper examines the labor market outcomes of individuals with various types of postsecondary educational experiences. In particular, it examines differences between students who have pursued technical education programs from those who have pursued academic programs and from those individuals who have not pursued any type of postsecondary education. Empirical evidence is presented concerning the relationship between economic outcomes and grades earned and the degree to which the labor market rewards credentials. Wage and earnings models yield different structural parameter estimates when based on the three different populations. The differences are most dramatic for high school background effects and for …