Economics Commons^™

Peer Misbehavior Effects In The Classroom, Alex Hwung

CMC Senior Theses

This paper seeks to evaluate the effects of peer misbehavior in the classroom on student learning outcomes--namely, if there is any truth behind the old saying that “one bad apple ruins the bunch”. Using experimental data, I show that there is a strong initial relationship between the level of misbehavior in a given classroom and performance on a mathematics evaluation; however, the inclusion of lagged peer achievement in the model causes most of that relationship to be absorbed away, suggesting that the bulk of peer effects stem more from the academic performance of other students than from their behavior.

An Analysis Of Education Reform In Sub-Saharan Africa, Katharine Eger

CMC Senior Theses

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to fall behind other developing regions regarding educational attainment, despite recent progress in enrollment. This thesis examines a variety of external conditional factors that could contribute to a country’s relative success, in terms of years spent in school using a prediction model that compares years enrolled in secondary education as a foundation to determine over- and under-performing countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

By exploring various educational policies, historical patterns, and projects executed in Rwanda, South Africa, Ghana, and Botswana, this thesis sheds light on four main challenges that can impact educational attainment: ethnic and racial tensions, an acute …

Escaping The Poverty Trap: Formal Savings And Asset Accumulation In Rural Malawi, Audrey Breitwieser

CMC Senior Theses

Formal savings accounts can be an effective device for households to accumulate assets over time and thus have more funds available to better afford an expensive one-time payment, in the form of either addressing an economic shock or paying for an important life event. I explore this relationship using a field experiment in rural Malawi conducted from 2008-2010, and find that adoption of a formal savings account has no effect on the frequency of economic shocks that a household experiences, nor does it affect how households respond to shocks. However, I find that account adoption does significantly increase the frequency …

Essays In Economics Of Institutions And Culture, Luiza Valeriyevna Pogorelova

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present two distinct essays in economics of culture and institutions that can be read independently from one another. In Chapter 2, using the European Social Survey data, I investigate the impact of increased educational attainment, induced by compulsory schooling reforms, on religiosity and superstitious beliefs. I find consistently negative effects of education on religiosity, superstitious beliefs, social religious acts (attending religious services) and solitary religious acts (the frequency of praying). In Chapter 3, I examine the impact of “culture of leisure” and tax rates on labor force participation and hours worked of second-generation immigrants residing in …

Want A Job? Get A College Degree, Christopher R. Bollinger

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

While it is well known that a positive relationship exists between educational attainment and earnings for those who are in the labor market, an important part of how education impacts the well-being of families in Kentucky is the access to employment that it provides. In this brief, we examine the relationship between education and two measures of employment status: unemployment and labor force participation. What we find is quite striking: not only do those with higher education experience less unemployment, they are far more likely to be participating in the labor market. Education leads to better access to employment.

Impact Of Education On Medicaid Eligibility, Christopher R. Bollinger

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

The individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) coupled with the Medicaid expansion in Kentucky makes reducing Medicaid eligibility rates of crucial importance. This brief examines the link between education and eligibility for Medicaid for the citizens of Kentucky. In general, the relationship is nearly mechanical in that higher education leads to higher incomes. Since income is the key determining factor of Medicaid eligibility, and because of the individual mandate eligibility is mostly equivalent to participation, our estimates show that higher education reduces the likelihood that an adult will be on Medicaid or have children and family members on …

The Effects Of Education Across The Kentucky Economy, Christopher R. Bollinger

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

The Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) (Gatton College, University of Kentucky) was commissioned by Kentucky’s Council for Postsecondary Education to examine the implications of education across the Kentucky economy. This study used data on Kentuckians from the American Community Survey (ACS), the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The focus on Kentucky is unique, as most studies of this kind have used only national data. The results have allowed us to examine how education is related to important outcomes related …

How To Raise State Revenue Without Raising Taxes, Christopher R. Bollinger

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

A positive relationship exists between educational attainment and earnings, which has been well established in the literature through multiple studies. This, in turn, influences the revenues generated for the state of Kentucky through the personal income tax. We predict even the modest change of increasing Associate’s and Bachelor’s degree holders by 1% would increase revenue by $37 million. Kentucky loses between $300 million and $500 million in state tax revenues every year because our educational attainment is lower than the national average.

Education For Your Health!, Christopher R. Bollinger

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

The health of the people of Kentucky is of high concern for policymakers and citizens alike. Individuals want to live healthy, productive lives, while policymakers recognize that chronic illnesses cost the state in myriad ways. In this brief, we examine the link between educational attainment and health outcomes. We focus on two groups of health outcomes. The first are behavioral and include choices: tobacco use, alcohol use, obesity, and exercise. The second group are outcomes highly associated with these behaviors: heart attack, angina, stroke, and diabetes. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that these four diseases may cost Kentuckians …

Crime And Punishment And Education, Christopher R. Bollinger, Bethany L. Paris

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

Crime impacts the lives of Kentuckians in myriad ways. It has direct costs to victims and indirect costs through property values and business activity. Citizens and policymakers alike desire to reduce and limit crime. In this brief, we investigate the link between crime rates in Kentucky’s counties and the aggregate level of education. Perhaps surprisingly, higher education, and specifically the percent of the population with a Bachelor’s degree, is associated with lower crime. We find that increasing educational attainment in Kentucky to the U.S. levels could reduce the costs of crime by over $3 million annually.

Education Pays Everywhere!, Christopher R. Bollinger

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

Economists and other researchers have long demonstrated the relationship between education and earnings. In this brief, we focus on the relationship between educational attainment and earnings in the state of Kentucky. Our results, in many ways, are unsurprising, as the old ad campaign said, “Education Pays.” What may be surprising is that we demonstrate that education pays not only in the big cities of Lexington and Louisville, but also in the more rural parts of the state, such as eastern Kentucky and western Kentucky.

Moving People Off Public Assistance Programs Through Education, Christopher R. Bollinger

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

Two of the largest federal transfer programs are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Federal expenditures on SNAP exceeded $74 billion in 2014, and SSI exceeded $3 billion. While these programs provide families in distress with important support, ideally we desire that Kentucky families would not require this kind of assistance. In 2014, over 800,000 Kentuckians received SNAP assistance each month while over 190,000 received SSI. This brief examines the relationship between participation in these programs and educational attainment for Kentuckians. We find that education is highly related to participation and that those with higher …

Impact Of International Remittances On Schooling In The Philippines: Does The Relationship To The Household Head Matter?, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the impact of international remittances on schooling in the Philippines, taking into account the school-age individual's relationship to the household head. This consideration is important because employment opportunities abroad may be taken at the expense of the quality of child rearing. Our estimation results indicate that there are, indeed, significant negative guardian effects on school attendance and education expenditures when children with overseas parents are looked after by a relative other than a parent or grandparent. However, these negative effects tend to be outweighed by the positive impact of remittance flows from overseas.

Does Education Increase Pro-Environmental Behavior? Evidence From Europe, Andrew G. Meyer

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

It is often observed that individuals with higher education levels tend to be more environmentally friendly. Yet, the causal evidence is lacking because there may well be omitted variables that cause individuals to attain more education and also cause individuals to be environmentally conscious. We implement a regression discontinuity design to estimate the increase in educational attainment due to changes in compulsory education laws in 20th century Europe. This allows us to overcome the identification problem of endogenous educational attainment. Using two waves of Eurobarometer surveys, we find a positive local average treatment effect for 7 of the 8 pro-environmental …

Political Inclusion And Educational Investment, Stephen D. O'Connell

Economics Working Papers

Using exogenous geographic variation in exposure to 1993 reforms that introduced seat quotas for women in local government in India, I find a sizable increase in the enrollment rate of male and female school-age children resulting from additional exposure to women leaders. Effects are particularly concentrated among poorer households and those with less- educated proximate role models, and were commensurate with reductions in idle time and household-enterprise employment. There is no evidence for the effects being facilitated by changes in school infrastructure, the labor market, or among broader social factors related to intrahousehold bargaining. Using textual data from the news …

A Close Look At The Relationship Between Poverty And Political Violence In Nepal, Lauren C. Griffin

Global Tides

Today, one quarter of Nepal’s population of 27 million lives on a daily income of less than two dollars (Sharma 8). Villages are deprived of an ample water supply, and some areas still lie in ruins from the aftermath of the Maoist insurgency. This paper will seek to understand the role of poverty in the historically and presently unfolding political environment of Nepal. Several factors show direct correlation between poverty and insurgent activity, such as land ownership, level of education and socio-economic standing. Nepal has had a volatile and bloody past in the midst of medieval dynasties, an authoritative monarchy …

The Impact Of Migration And Remittances On Children's Education In El Salvador, Philip H. Jakob

Master's Theses

The effect that migrant remittances have on school enrollment is a challenging relationship to empirically define, requiring both an analysis of the circumstances that lead a household member to emigrate from their home and equally, but not always independently, how the family makes investment decisions in the education of one or more of their children. This study presents a new strategy to determine the nature of this relationship for households in El Salvador, using a 2SLS estimation with a wealth-stratified panel constructed from household survey data over a nine-year period. Employing this methodology to estimate the combined effects of both …

Education And Women In The Informal Sector: A Cross-Country Analysis, Linh T. Nguyen

Undergraduate Economic Review

This study investigates the effects of education on the participation of women in the informal sector of 40 developing countries using OLS linear regression. Through some econometric adjustments, the final model suggests that education, represented by years of schooling, is correlated with a 2.74% increase in women’s chances of being employed in this sub-sector of the economy. This means that the better educated still end up doing the jobs that do not require such knowledge. An implication of the result is that the current way which schooling is delivered to the poor might not be the most efficient way.

Economic Growth And Development In Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, And Latin America: The Impact Of Human Capital, Angui D. Macham

Applied Economics Theses

My thesis is that human capital has been important to growth, but has had differential impact in three areas: Sub-Sahara Africa; Asia; and Latin America. I estimated three regional models to determine the impact of human capital on the growth of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Each model was estimated using the pooled OLS approach with a sample of 10 countries within each region. I make use of data from the Penn World Table- international comparisons of production data bank. I found that only the African region had statistically significant coefficients for both physical and human capital. For the …

University Of The Future Colombia-Purdue Workshop Report, Suresh V. Garimella, David B. Janes, Liliana Gómez Díaz

PPRI Digital Library

The University of the Future Workshop, a joint Colombia-Purdue event, was held at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, October 28-29, 2014. Participants included rectors and board members from six top universities in Colombia, along with executive directors of NGOs, government representatives from the U.S. and Colombia, and Purdue faculty and administrators. The workshop was focused on a dialog among participants on key programs and focuses that will allow universities to be responsive to the 21st century needs of the Americas.

This report is a summary of the workshop and is based on the contributions of all the participants. Key …

A Concept Paper On Networks Of Excellence For Research And Education, Suresh V. Garimella, David B. Janes, Anne Slaughter Andrew

PPRI Digital Library

Research and education ecosystems, foundational components of knowledge-based economies, are relatively underdeveloped in Latin America. The entire ecosystem of a research university — including resources, corporate partnerships, and research — must capitalize on a symbiosis between the research, education and commercialization missions. A university cannot transform unilaterally nor can universities sustain the required transformation without government and industry participation. Initiatives to accelerate the development of research university ecosystems are critical for the realization of knowledge-based economies and resilient civil societies.

To accelerate the development of research and education ecosystems across the Americas, the authors propose to establish “Networks of Excellence” …

State Failure And Political Instability: The Impact Of Educational Attainment In Africa, Jesse D. Neugarten

Undergraduate Economic Review

I investigate the role of educational attainment on state failure and political stability across the African continent. For the empirical analysis, I estimate a Linear Probability Model (LPM) for State Failure by Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). I hypothesize that differences in educational attainment in Africa can explain differences in political stability and state failure. Furthermore, I believe that this effect has persisted over time and that early educational attainment in the late colonial and early independence era is a significant determinant of state affairs in more recent times. I find that early secondary educational attainment explains higher state stability, while …

Effects Of Husband’S Education On Wife’S Earnings: The Recent Evidence, Humenghe Zhao

Gettysburg Economic Review

This paper aims to examine the relationship between husband’s education and his wife’s earnings. The study builds upon previous literature revolving around the relationship between a woman’s human capital and her husband’s earnings. Using pooled cross-sectional data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), I adjust the OLS wage model to estimate whether a man’s human capital has positive effects on his wife’s earnings. Two major hypotheses concerning the correlation between spousal education and earnings are cross-productivity effect between couples and assortative mating. Using the original regression model, I also estimate a sub-sample designed to restrict the effects of positive assortative …

2015-1 Separating State Dependence, Experience, And Heterogeneity In A Model Of Youth Crime And Education, Maria Antonella Mancino, Salvador Navarro, David A. Rivers

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Needs Assessment For A Nurse Practitioner-Led Transitional Care Program, Maria Victoria Trinidad Salcedo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The rising cost of health care and changes in healthcare delivery have prompted a need to improve continuity from the hospital to home. This scholarly project was initiated to assess the impact on patient outcomes related to initiation of a nurse practitioner-led transitional care program (TCP). Using the Diffusion of Innovations and Health Belief Models, the purpose of this study was to identify the impact of a TCP on improving the health of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF), diabetes mellitus Type II (DM II), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). The impact of the TCP was evaluated by a …

The Impact Of Education Cascading Through The Economy, Center For Business And Economic Research, Gatton College Of Business And Economics, University Of Kentucky

CBER Infographic Posters

Research confirms what common sense suggests, higher levels of education are associated with better economic outcomes like higher wages and lower unemployment. And by improving health, increasing technology use, expanding volunteerism, and reducing public assistance, higher education levels have long-lasting effects on the economy. Eighty years ago, Kentucky's per capita personal income was just over 50% of the U.S. average; today it is just over 80%. Kentucky's educational position has improved significantly over the last twenty-five years, but the state still lags the U.S. in college attainment (23% compared to 30%) and academic achievement gaps continue to mute overall educational …

The Political Economy Of Good Governance, Sisay Asefa Editor, Wei-Chiao Huang Editor

Upjohn Press

The contributors to this book capture several of the key dimensions of good governance, as well as what deleterious and negative consequences may arise in its absence. They draw analysis and solutions from diverse sectors such as economics, public administration, management, and political science, in order to treat some of the most pressing societal issues of our time. They connect the importance of education, health, climate change, and poverty to address the challenges of creating a world where more countries embrace good governance policies to benefit their peoples.

Risky Business: An Analysis Of Teacher Risk Preferences, Daniel H. Bowen, Stuart Buck, Cary Deck, Jonathan N. Mills, James V. Shuls

ESI Publications

A range of proposals aim to reform teacher compensation, recruitment, and retention. Teachers have generally not embraced these policies. One potential explanation for their objections is that teachers are relatively risk averse. We examine this hypothesis using a risk-elicitation task common to experimental economics. By comparing preferences of new teachers with those entering other professions, we find that individuals choosing to teach are significantly more risk averse. This suggests that the teaching profession may attract individuals who are less amenable to certain reforms. Policy-makers should take into account teacher risk characteristics when considering reforms that may clash with preferences.

Examining The Relationship Between Received Remittances And Education In Malawi, Kasvi Malik

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between received remittances and education using random samples from panel survey data from households in rural Malawi collected between 2008 and 2010. Past research as well as that conducted in this paper point to the fact that remittances and education share an important correlation. The results of this study indicate that on a microeconomic level, remittances have a highly significant and positive impact on household education. Other remittance-related factors such as the distance from agent, the remittance amount, and the type of account held by an individual also have a significant impact on the highest …

Nonpublic Competition And Public School Performance: Evidence From West Virginia, Richard J. Cebula, Joshua C. Hall, Maria Y. Tackett

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

In this study, we investigate whether nonpublic school enrollment affects the performance of public school districts. If homeschooling and private schools act as competition, public school districts test scores should be positively associated with nonpublic enrollment. Using data on West Virginia county school districts, and controlling for endogeneity with an instrumental variables approach, we find that a one standard deviation increase in relative nonpublic enrollment in a county is associated with statistically significant increases in public school district test scores. Our findings thus confirm that nonpublic enrollment and the competition it provides act to improve, rather than impede, public school …