Economics Commons^™

Can In-Prison Interventions Affect Post-Release Outcomes? Evidence From Correctional Education Programs Based On An Econometric Analysis Of Recidivism, Jack Lucas Tilley

Honors Papers

This paper evaluates the impact of in-prison educational and vocational programs on recidivism among former inmates released from prisons in five different states during 1994. It is the first study to consider this particular topic using a subset of nationally representative data. Two sets of microeconometric analyses are performed in order to identify potential program effects. Initially, a basic multivariate framework is considered in which special consideration is given to problems of program heterogeneity; next, a propensity score matching (PSM) approach is used to address the issue of self-selection inherent in observational studies of this kind. The findings of this …

Integrated Overview, Case-Studies And Analysis: Income Inequality In Latin America, Post-1980, Aaron R. Campbell

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis provides an integrated overview on the historical and contemporary literature dedicated to the study of within-country income inequality in Latin America.

The central hypothesis of this report is that there are underlying factors that drive the persistent levels of high within-country inequality experienced by Latin American countries. We study two countries, Brazil and Bolivia, through the process of reform and growth, and note the effects on the labor markets.

Using all available statistics and the wealth of knowledge compiled since the early 1980s, this study identifies those trends, and the factors that cause them to reappear in numerous …

Obedience, Schooling, And Political Participation, Davin Chor, Filipe R. Campante

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the joint evolution of cultural norms and human capital investment, and how these affect patterns of political participation. We first present some empirical evidence that cultural attitudes towards obedience systematically influence an individual's propensity to engage in different political activities: obedience discourages more confrontational modes of political activity (such as public demonstrations), while raising participation in non-confrontational civic acts (such as voting). These cultural attitudes further appear to be determined in part by cultural transmission across generations. Motivated by this evidence, we develop a dynamic model in which human capital and obedience are …

Governance Reforms In Education, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

The education policy announced recently envisages a big jump in the allocation of public expenditure on education from the current level of two per cent of the GDP to seven per cent over the next five years.

"The Female Entrepreneur"?, Cath Collins

Human Rights & Human Welfare

I read the “Women’s Crusade” article that forms the centrepiece of this month’s roundtable with initial interest, gradually turning to a vague sense of disquiet spiced with occasional disbelief. After a few more readings, I tried highlighting the passages that bothered me and stringing them together. Countries “riven by fundamentalism”— that’s presumably the Islamic variety, rather than the Christian variant which holds such sway in the US. The suggestion that “everyone from the World Bank to the US [...] Chiefs of Staff to [...] CARE” now thinks that women are the answer to global extremism hides too many questionable assumptions …

A Few Drops Of Oil Will Not Be Enough, Stephen James

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn provide a rich description of the various kinds of violence, deprivation, depredation and exploitation that women experience on a vast scale in the developing world. They write of sex trafficking, acid attacks, “bride burning,” enslavement, spousal beatings, unequal healthcare (something the USA still struggles with), insufficient food, gendered abortions and infant and maternal mortality. They are right to identify the education of women and girls as part of the solution to the widespread “gendercide.” However, their approach focuses too much on the capacity, indeed the virtue or heroism, of individual women. It does not take …

Education And Energy Innovation: Nshe’S Central Role In Transforming Nevada’S Economy, James Croce

UNLV Renewable Energy Symposium

The 3rd Annual Renewable Energy Symposium took place on the UNLV campus August 11 & 12. The event focused on renewable energy production in Nevada, the US Southwest, and renewable research projects nationwide. The event was a great success with over 200 individuals in attendance.

Grading Exams: 100, 99, 98,...Or A, B, C?, Pradeep Dubey, John Geanakoplos

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

No abstract provided.

Analisis Crowding Out Effect Dan Public Choice Dalam Penentuan Anggaran Pendidikan Pemerintah Daerah Studi Kasus 337 Kab./Kota Periode 2001-2005 Di Indonesia, Irfani Fithria U. M.

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

The focus of this study is crowding out effect and public choice mechanism in determination of education expenditures of local government. Education spending has risen significantly over three last decades. Indonesia 2001's decentralization is rapidly moving the country from one of the most centralized system in the world to one of the most decentralized. The country has embarked on a program of fiscal, administrative and political decentralization at the same time. It has been asserted that larger education expenditures have caused local governments to spend less on other types of government services. Using panel of districts-level data for the period …

Social And Economic Indicators Typifying The Community's Health, George A. Erickcek, Bridget Timmeney, Brad R. Watts, Brian Pittelko

Reports

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Education Subsidy In The Presence Of Fertility Decisions, Human Capital Accumulation, And Spillovers, Woan Foong Wong

Honors Papers

The paper hypothesizes that the level of aggregate human capital in an economy affects the overall returns of an individual's human capital accumulation and fertility decision. However, the positive externalities from aggregate human capital are not internalized by households in their investment decisions. Using an overlapping-generations model, specify the household’s optimization problem in a rural developing country where parents have an old-age support motive that underlies the benefits of having and educating children. The optimal decision of parents is then contrasted with that of the social planner. They differ in that the social planner internalizes the externalities of aggregate human …

Public Spending On Education And The Incentives For Student Achievement, William Blankenau, Gabriele Camera

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

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 enrollment 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.

Youth Migration And Poverty In Sub-Saharan Africa: Empowering The Rural Youth, Charlotte Min-Harris

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Sangaré, a poor young farmer from a village in southern Mali, leaves his wife and three children to find stable employment in the capital city of Bamako. What he finds is an unrewarding reality that leads him from small job to small job, only earning about US 22 cents per day. These jobs range from selling sunglasses, to shining shoes, to driving a rickshaw. Unfortunately, his income has not proved enough to provide for his family, as his aunt has since adopted his daughter, and his children cannot attend school. The inability to find stable employment in Bamako has forced …

Building A Knowledge Economy Index For Southern Metropolitan Areas, Kristine Koutout

All Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to determine if the methodology used to build the South Carolina Research Authority Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) for states can be replicated and applied to Southern Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Data to imitate the KEI measures for workforce education and fast growth firms were available at the MSA-level; however, academic R&D was used as a proxy for industrial R&D in this index because data was not available for MSAs. An index for Southern MSAs was built based on the coefficients from the OLS results. Workforce education was the most important factor for increasing mean …

The Revitalization Of Older Industrial Cities: A Review Essay Of Retooling For Growth, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This review essay debates the policy issues raised by the book Retooling for Growth: Building a 21st Century Economy in America's Older Industrial Areas, edited by Richard M. McGahey and Jennifer S. Vey (Brookings Institution Press, 2008). I argue that the main rationale for adopting policies to revitalize older industrial cities is to improve the per capita earnings of urban residents. Therefore, urban economic development policy should be seen as urban labor market policy. Increasing city residents' earnings requires progress on two fronts: increasing metropolitan labor demand; increasing the quantity and quality of the effective labor supply of city residents …

A Dynamic Analysis Of Human Welfare In A Warming Planet, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have caused atmospheric concentrations with no precedents in the last half a million years, inducing serious uncertainties about future climates and their effects on human welfare. Recent climate science supports the view that the climate stabilization will require very low GHG emissions in the future. We ask: Is a path of low emissions compatible with sustainable levels of human welfare? With steady growth in human quality of life? Addressing these questions requires both defining welfare criteria and empirically estimating the possible paths of the economy. We specify and calibrate a dynamic model with four intertemporal …

A Dynamic Analysis Of Human Welfare In A Warming Planet, Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer, Joaquim Silvestre

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Climate science indicates that climate stabilization requires low GHG emissions. Is this consistent with nondecreasing human welfare? Our welfare index, called quality of life (QuoL), emphasizes education, knowledge, and the environment. We construct and calibrate a multigenerational model with intertemporal links provided by education, physical capital, knowledge and the environment. We reject discounted utilitarianism and adopt, first, the Intergenerational Maximin criterion, and, second, Human Development Optimization, that maximizes the QuoL of the first generation subject to a given future rate of growth. We apply these criteria to our calibrated model via a novel algorithm inspired by the turnpike property. The …

Part 4: Women Earn Less Than Men In Hampton Roads. Why?, Regional Studies Institute, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

As is true nationally, women in Hampton Roads earn less than men. Gender earnings differentials are particularly large in occupations characterized by “crowding” – where women constitute a sizable proportion of those employed. Economically speaking, women may be better off in the Richmond metro area than in Hampton Roads.

The Effect Of Teach For America Teachers Outside Their Classrooms, Sarah Prenovitz

Honors Papers

Teach for America (TFA) aims to some day make it possible for every American child to receive a great education. As means to that end TFA attempts to get teachers "willing to go above and beyond the constraints of the system to ensure that their students excel" into classrooms, to encourage "long-term, sustained leadership in education;" and to "change the prevailing ideology around educational inequity," which supports a rationalization that poor children achieve less than others because they are unmotivated and do not receive support at home (see www.teachforamerica.org). The organization argues that teachers alone cannot change the system, but …

Do Community Colleges Respond To Local Needs?: Evidence From California, Duane E. Leigh, Andrew M. Gill

Upjohn Press

Leigh and Gill focus on two major, policy relevant sources of change at the local level. First, on the supply side, they examine how responsive community colleges’ are at meeting the needs of the growing immigrant population for education and training. Then, on the demand side, they look into whether the need of local employers for skilled workers is being met, an issue impacted by dynamic technological change and increased global competition.

Differences In The College Enrollment Decision Across Race, Robert Baumann

Economics Department Working Papers

The gap in college enrollment rates between whites and blacks has remained stable since 1990, despite large increases in tuition and higher average wages for whites. We find the determinants of the enrollment decision differ greatly between whites and blacks, and within race between black males and females, but not between white males and females. These systematic differences require separate enrollment estimations for each race and for blacks each gender. Specifically, responses to changes in family income, parents’ education, and school quality are vastly different across race-gender groups.

2007-2 The Causal Effect Of Studying On Academic Performance, Todd R. Stinebrickner, Ralph Stinebrickner

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

2007-1 The Effect Of Credit Constraints On The College Drop-Out Decision: A Direct Approach Using A New Panel Study, Todd R. Stinebrickner, Ralph Stinebrickner

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Voices Of The Poor: Poverty And Growth In Albania, Magda Tsaneva

Undergraduate Research Symposium (UGRS)

This paper uses three waves of panel surveys at the household level to study growth and poverty in Albania over the period 2002-2004. It attempts to answer two main questions. The first question is directed at finding the micro determinants of growth and aims to expose the obstacles households face to improve their economic situation. The main focus of the analysis is to investigate the importance of health, education, and infrastructure indicators for income growth. The second question asks whether growth in Albania during the period 2002-2004 has been pro-poor. I find that there is some evidence for a convergence …

Voices Of The Poor: Poverty And Growth In Albania, Magda Tsaneva

Honors Theses

This paper uses three waves of panel surveys at the household level to study growth and poverty in Albania over the period 2002-2004. It attempts to answer two main questions. The first question is directed at finding the micro determinants of growth and aims to expose the obstacles households face to improve their economic situation. The main focus of the analysis is to investigate the importance of health, education, and infrastructure indicators for income growth. The second question asks whether growth in Albania during the period 20022004 has been pro-poor. I find that there is some evidence for a convergence …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

The editor's note at the beginning of this journal briefly speaks about each article within. The author touches upon learning, the challenges to an education, the effects of the growth of technology, how world politics interfere with economy, and how employment is affected by technology.

Development Of A Regional Economic Dashboard, Randall W. Eberts, George A. Erickcek, Jack Kleinhenz

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Economics Of Education: A Case Study Of Wachusett Regional High School, Carly E. Holbrook

Economics Honors Papers

[Introduction]Over two thousand years ago, Aristotle said, “the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” (Peter 1977: 173). This study will attempt to determine some of the important factors about the economics of high school education in the United States. Schools exist to serve children, their parents, and society at large, and these three groups do not always have identical interests. Therefore, education has many goals besides the obvious one of increased cognitive ability, and the best methods for achieving the desired effects have not been agreed upon. Economists label the process by which education creates these outcomes …

An Assessment Of Education And Training Needs In The Ohio Aerospace Industry, Shari Garmise

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

The Ohio Aerospace Institute engaged the Center for Economic Development at the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University to conduct an assessment of the education and training needs of Ohio aerospace companies, with an e

At The Cross Roads: Us / Mexico Border Counties In Transition, Dennis L. Soden

IPED Technical Reports

In 1998, former Texas Comptroller John Sharp published Bordering the Future: Challenge and Opportunity in the Texas Border Region,which provided an assessment of the economic, political, and social condition of the Texas border counties. This report, commissioned by the US / Mexico Border Counties Coalition, extends those findings to all of the 24 U.S. counties that are contiguous with Mexico. As a region, if these 24 counties were the 51st state, how would they compare with the rest of the nation?