nep-edu New Economics Papers
on Education
Issue of 2007‒04‒14
fourteen papers chosen by
Joao Carlos Correia Leitao
University of the Beira Interior

  1. Violence in European schools : victimization and consequences By Ammermüller, Andreas
  2. Distributional effects of the high school degree in Germany By Gernandt, Johannes; Maier, Michael; Pfeiffer, Friedhelm; Rat-Wirtzler, Julie
  3. Regulation and marketisation in the Portuguese higher education system By Miguel Portela; Nelson Areal; Carla Sá; Fernando Alexandre; João Cerjeira; Ana Carvalho; Artur Rodrigues
  4. Where do I go and what should I do? Routes through further education. By Pamela Lenton
  5. Knowledge management in higher education. A conceptual analysis By Ferrer, Julian; Ríos, Manriquez
  6. Does mobility of educated workers undermine decentralized education policies? By Christiane Schuppert
  7. Wage Differentials, Rate of Return to Education, and Occupational Wage Share in the Labour Market of Pakistan By Asma Hyder
  8. Educational expansion and its heterogeneous returns for wage workers By Gebel, Michael; Pfeiffer, Friedhelm
  9. Foreign Capital, Return to Education and Child labour By Dwibedi, Jayanta; Chaudhuri, Sarbajit
  10. Human capital and successful academic spin-off By Müller, Bettina
  11. Explaining Ethnic Disparities in School Enrollment in Turkey By Kirdar, Murat
  12. Labour market job matching for UK minority ethnic groups By Shirley Dex; Jo Lindley
  13. Exploring the relationship between scientist human capital and firm performance . the case of biomedical academic entrepreneurs in the SBIR program By Toole, Andrew A.; Czarnitzki, Dirk
  14. An empirical assessment of co-activity among German professors By Czarnitzki, Dirk; Glänzel, Wolfgang; Hussinger, Katrin

  1. By: Ammermüller, Andreas
    Abstract: Violence at schools is a well-known problem in many societies. This paper assesses the degree of school violence in 11 European countries and analyzes the determinants of being a victim and its effect on student performance. The study draws on the international TIMSS 2003 and the British longitudinal NCDS data. The level of school violence is high in most countries but seems not to increase over time. Besides gender, social and migration background and the appearance of students determine being bullied, hurt or stolen from by fellow students. Being a victim has a small but significantly negative impact on contemporary and later student performance and the level of educational attainment and thereby affects earnings. It is hence an important peer effect that should not be omitted in the estimation of educational production functions.
    Keywords: School violence, bullying, human capital, TIMSS, NCDS
    JEL: I21 J24 Z13
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5491&r=edu
  2. By: Gernandt, Johannes; Maier, Michael; Pfeiffer, Friedhelm; Rat-Wirtzler, Julie
    Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of a high school degree on the wage distribution in the period from 1984 to 2004 in Germany. In that period the share of male workers with a high school degree increased from 16 to 25 percent. An econometric evaluation estimator is used to analyze quantile treatment effects for the whole population of male workers and for the subpopulation of workers with a high school degree. It turns out that the impact of a high school degree on the wage distribution for all workers is positive, whereas its impact on the wage distribution of the workers with a high school degree does statistically not differ from zero. This suggests that the selection of students into grammer schools might have been too restrictive. For more workers higher education would have raised their productivity and wages.
    Keywords: Economic returns to secondary education, econometric evaluation, quantile treatment effects, educational expansion
    JEL: C14 C21 J31
    Date: 2006
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5481&r=edu
  3. By: Miguel Portela (Universidade do Minho - NIPE, Tinbergen Institute and IZA Bonn); Nelson Areal (Universidade do Minho - NEGE); Carla Sá (Universidade do Minho - NIPE); Fernando Alexandre (Universidade do Minho - NIPE); João Cerjeira (Universidade do Minho - NIPE); Ana Carvalho (Universidade do Minho - NEGE); Artur Rodrigues (Universidade do Minho - NEGE)
    Abstract: This paper builds on the ongoing discussion on regulation and marketisation of higher education. It aims at investigating the higher education market (des)equilibrium. Teixeira, Rosa and Amaral (2004) have analysed the presence/absence of market mechanisms in the Portuguese higher education sector. We go a step further in quantifying the (mis)mactching between demand and supply, by suggesting and computing a set of indicators, which provide the starting point for a ranking-based analysis. Institutional rankings are central to overcome the problem of absence of information on quality in higher education systems, which is a basic requirement for a real higher education market.
    Keywords: higher education market, demand, supply
    JEL: I21 I28
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nip:nipewp:11/2007&r=edu
  4. By: Pamela Lenton (Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield)
    Abstract: This paper investigates the educational attainment of young people between the ages of sixteen and eighteen after having entered full-time post-compulsory education. In particular we focus on the educational attainment and labour market trajectory of `underachievers´: young people who have chosen to remain in full-time education at age sixteen, despite not gaining the widely recognised U.K. academic benchmark of five GCSE grades A*-C. Our results suggest that the best route to educational success for young people considered as of lower ability at age 16 is through the FE college where they catch-up with their `more able´ counterparts by age 18.
    Keywords: Attainment, Vocational Education
    JEL: I21 J24
    Date: 2006–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shf:wpaper:2006014&r=edu
  5. By: Ferrer, Julian; Ríos, Manriquez
    Abstract: Knowledge management represents a field study with a growing interest in several areas. By this, it is necesary to make a detailed analyss about possible impacts in diferent perspectives. Specially, universities must be considered as knowledge managers in its own nature, under their main functions: research, academics, continue education. This work has a main objetive to determinate the KM organizational impact in universities.
    Keywords: Knowledge management; higher education; university
    JEL: D83 I21
    Date: 2006–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:2622&r=edu
  6. By: Christiane Schuppert
    Abstract: The present paper studies a multi-jurisdictional framework, in which, from a federal perspective, educational subsidies turn out to be efficiency enhancing. However, in the presence of mobile high-skilled labor, local jurisdictions might try to free-ride on other regions´education policies and abstain from subsidizing education. Social mobility is introduced as an additional dimension of labor mobility. Using this framework, it is shown that local governments abide by the optimal decision rule for subsidizing human capital investments. Hence, decentralized education policies remain to be efficient, although high-skilled workers are perfectly mobile. Only if one allows for high- and low-skilled mobility, local incentives to promote education vanish.
    Date: 2007–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mik:wpaper:07_01&r=edu
  7. By: Asma Hyder (Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad)
    Abstract: This paper examines the magnitude of public/private wage differentials in Pakistan using data drawn from the 2001-02 Labour Force Survey. Pakistan Labour Force Survey is a nationwide survey containing micro data from all over the country containing demographic and employment information. As in many other countries, public sector workers in Pakistan tend to have higher average pay and educational levels as compared to their private sector counterparts. First, this paper presents the inter-sectoral earning equations for the three main sectors of the economy, i.e., public, private, and state-owned enterprises. These results are further decomposed into “treatment” and “endowment effect”. To examine the role of human capital in wage gap, the rate of return to different levels of schooling is calculated. These rates of return to education may be important for policy formulation. The relative earning share is also worked out to look into the distribution of wages across the occupational categories. The earning equations are estimated with and without correction for selectivity, which is also the main objective of the study, i.e., to find out if any non-random selection is taking place within these three sectors of employment
    Keywords: Wage Differentials, Rate of Return to Education, Public Sector Labour Markets
    JEL: J32 J45 J24
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pid:wpaper:2007:17&r=edu
  8. By: Gebel, Michael; Pfeiffer, Friedhelm
    Abstract: The paper examines the evolution of returns to education in the West German labour market over the last two decades. During this period, graduates from the period of educational expansion in the sixties and seventies entered the labour market and an upgrading of the skill structure took place. In order to tackle the issues of endogeneity of schooling and its heterogeneous returns we apply two estimation methods: Wooldridge’s (2004) approach that relies on conditional mean independence and Garen’s (1984) control function approach that requires an exclusion restriction. For the population of workers from the GSOEP, we find that both approaches produce estimates of average returns to education that decrease until the late 1990s and increase significantly afterwards. In the observation period, the gender gap in returns to education seems to vanish. Furthermore, we find that the so called “baby boomer” cohort has the lowest average return to education in young ages. However, this effect disappears when they become older.
    Keywords: Educational expansion, correlated random coefficient model, heterogeneous returns to education, conditional mean independence
    JEL: J21 J24 J31
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5497&r=edu
  9. By: Dwibedi, Jayanta; Chaudhuri, Sarbajit
    Abstract: This paper attempts to identify the different channels through which economic reforms can affect the incidence of child labour in a developing economy. Using a three-sector general equilibrium model it shows that inflows of foreign capital can lower the problem of child labour by raising the return to education and reducing the earning opportunities of children. It demonstrates how foreign capital produces favourable effect on the incidence of child labour although it affects wage inequality adversely.
    Keywords: Child labour; general equilibrium; foreign capital; return to education; wage inequality.
    JEL: F21
    Date: 2007–03–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:2646&r=edu
  10. By: Müller, Bettina
    Abstract: Academic spin-offs are one way in which employability of university graduates is reflected. Using the ZEW spinoff-survey, this paper studies empirically the impact of human capital on the success of academic spinoffs founding in knowledge and technology intensive sectors. The focus is thereby on the composition of human capital which is described according to whether or not the founders have studied several subjects and whether or not they all come from the same research establishment. Additionally the impact of having founded as a team is analyzed. Success is measured by employment growth. The findings suggest that it is advantageous to found within a team, but that the human capital composition both for single entrepreneurs and team foundations is rather irrelevant.
    Keywords: Higher Education, Human Capital, Entrepreneurship, Spin-off
    JEL: C12 L25 M13
    Date: 2006
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5474&r=edu
  11. By: Kirdar, Murat
    Abstract: There exist remarkable differences in educational outcomes across ethnic groups in Turkey. Moreover, almost a quarter of the population of 8- to 15-year-old children belong to ethnic minority groups. Yet, there exists no study that examines the ethnic disparities in educational outcomes in Turkey. This study presents these disparities and uncovers the factors that bring about these disparities using a rich micro-level dataset (Turkish Demographic and Health Survey). In doing so, this paper examines the differences not only in the levels of enrollment but also in the timing of drop-out across ethnic groups. The multivariate analysis accounts for a rich set of regional and socioeconomic factors, which also display striking differences across ethnic groups. The results show that regional and family level characteristics can fully account for the differences in the levels of enrollment across ethnic groups for male children, but not fully for female children. In other words, ethnicity has a direct impact on girls' school enrollment but not on boys'. There exists a gender gap among ethnic Turkish children as well as ethnic Arabic and Kurdish children. However, the gender gap among ethnic Kurdish children is wider than that among ethnic Turkish children.
    Keywords: Education; Ethnicity; Gender; Human Capital
    JEL: I21 J16 J15
    Date: 2007–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:2649&r=edu
  12. By: Shirley Dex; Jo Lindley (Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield)
    Abstract: The paper devises a new method of calculating whether individuals are over educated using a parametric model. This new method is applied to men and women from different ethnic groups using data drawn from 4 pooled cross-sections of the UK Labour Force Survey. Calibrated against existing mean-mode methods, the new approach leads to lower levels of over education, more so for men than women. The model is then extended to include non-qualification elements of human capital such as employment experience and job related skills. Model specifications are further varied by educational qualification measures, the presence of children and gender, as well as allowing for full gender segregation by estimating a single equation (pooled men and women) and separate equations (men and women separately). The results show that the while the overall extent of over education has similarities with earlier studies (eg. over-education is more prevalent amongst women than men), the differences between ethnic groups, as well as between minority ethnic groups and White employees, are far less than that found in some earlier studies. Black African men and women had the greatest amount of over education, followed by Chinese women. Bangladeshi women had the lowest rates among women. It is probably possible to explain almost all of the gap in over education rates between white and minority women and men by a combination of factors; differences in working part time, being temporarily over educated and by differences in the quality of educational qualifications.
    Keywords: Qualifications, discrimination, employment, ethnicity
    JEL: J15 J61
    Date: 2007–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shf:wpaper:2007003&r=edu
  13. By: Toole, Andrew A.; Czarnitzki, Dirk
    Abstract: Do academic scientists bring valuable human capital to the companies they found or join? If so, what are the particular skills that compose their human capital and how are these skills related to firm performance? This paper examines these questions using a particular group of academic entrepreneurs – biomedical research scientists who choose to commercialize their knowledge through the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research Program. Our conceptual framework assumes the nature of an academic entrepreneurs’ prior research reflects the development of their human capital. We highlight differences in firm performance that correlate with differences in the scientists’ research orientations developed during their academic careers. We find that biomedical academic entrepreneurs with human capital oriented toward exploring scientific opportunities significantly improve their firms’ performance of research tasks such as “proof of concept” studies. Biomedical academic entrepreneurs with human capital oriented toward exploring commercial opportunities significantly improve their firms’ performance of invention oriented tasks such as patenting. Consistent with prior evidence, there also appears to be a form of diminishing returns to scientifically oriented human capital in a commercialization environment. Holding the commercial orientation of the scientists’ human capital constant, we find that increasing their human capital for identifying and exploring scientific opportunities significantly detracts from their firms’ patenting performance.
    Keywords: Academic Entrepreneurship, SBIR Program, Human Capital, Biotechnology
    JEL: D21 J24 L65 O32
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5498&r=edu
  14. By: Czarnitzki, Dirk; Glänzel, Wolfgang; Hussinger, Katrin
    Abstract: The growing importance of technology relevant non-publication output of university research has come into the focus of policy-makers’ interest. A fierce debate arose on possible negative consequences of the increasing commercialization of science, as it may come along with a reduction in research performance. This paper investigates the relationship between publishing as a measure of scientific output and patenting for German professors active in a range of science fields. We combine bibliometric/technometric indicators and econometric techniques to show that patenting positively correlates with, first, the publication output and, second, with publication quality of patenting researchers.
    Keywords: academic inventors, patents, publications
    JEL: O31 O32 O34
    Date: 2006
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5473&r=edu

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