Improving cognitive skills of young children has been suggested as a possible strategy for equalising opportunities across racial groups. Using data on four and five year olds in the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Children, we focus on two cognitive tests: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the "Who Am I?" test. We estimate the test score…

Failure to achieve equitable access to university studies has contributed to turning the focus to the funding of higher education systems. This paper aims to review critically the literature assessing the effectiveness of existing financing schemes and changes in them as a means for reducing the prevalent under-representation of students from a…

Diminishing marginal returns (DMR) to school inputs could explain a wide variety of findings in the research literature. One important example is the influential finding by Heyneman and Loxley that school inputs are the 'predominant influence' on achievement in developing nations, where input levels are low, even though the same school inputs have…

This paper examines whether the rapid growth in the number of students in British universities in recent years has led to congestion, in the sense that certain universities' output could have been higher if this expansion had been less rapid. The focus of the paper is on 45 older universities that were in existence prior to 1992. The analysis…

Demographic change in industrial countries will influence educational spending in potentially two ways. On the one hand, the decline in the number of school-age children should alleviate the financial pressure. On the other hand, the theoretical/empirical literature has established that the concomitantly increasing proportion of elderly in the…

A considerable sum of money is allocated to UK universities on the basis of Research Assessment Exercise performance. In this paper we analyse the two main funding models used in the United Kingdom and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. We suggest that the benchmarking used by the two main models have significant weaknesses, and propose an…

When the transition to market economy began, there was an unsatisfied demand for business education. A supply response has occurred, but business education is still developing. The authors argue that private schools can help mobilize resources and increase the quality and accessibility of business education. Drawing on surveys covering 15…

Standard introductory textbook authors assert that an increase in government spending expands aggregate demand in the short run but also raises the interest rate and, thus, crowds out private investment in the long run. Because the decrease in investment results in a smaller capital stock, potential output or production capacity decreases. The…

Getting a "wrong" sign in empirical work is a common phenomenon. Remarkably, econometrics textbooks provide very little information to practitioners on how this problem can arise. The author exposits a long list of ways in which a wrong sign can occur and how it might be corrected.

There is a difference between the private and social cost of preserving the past. Although it may be privately rational to forget the past, the social cost is significant: We fail to see that classical political economy is analytically egalitarian. The past is a rich source of surprises and debates, and resources on the Web are uniquely suited to…

Examines recent returns to schooling and vocational and occupational training in OECD countries. Provides estimates of short-cut, Mincer-type, and internal rates of return to schooling and alternative estimates of returns to formal and informal post-school training investments. High-return countries include Austria, Canada, France, Mexico,…

Academic departmentalization has limited the dimensionality and thus the richness of analysis in the social sciences. The author examines the case of a modern economics as an example. He reviews the ideas of Williamson (2000), who cites the limits of scope in the New Institutional Economics; Buchanan, who lays bare the ethical foundations of…

Reviews school-choice literature, highlighting empirical studies and the role of evaluation. Discusses the welfare economics of education and provides a chronology of research milestones. Summarizes "pro" and "con" arguments, addresses efficiency/productivity questions, reviews prominent U.S. cases, and discusses how evaluation studies can assess…

Describes and evaluates further education's new funding methodology, introduced in 1993 by Britain's Further Education Funding Council when it took control of the higher education sector from local authorities. The methodology provides colleges with incentives to expand and lower unit costs and tries to reduce funding inequities among colleges.…

Reviews "Learning from the Market: Integrating 'The Stock Market Game' across the Curriculum" guide for teachers in grades 4 to 12. Believes the guide suffers from errors of fact and omission. Suggests corrections and alternative activities that enable instructors to continue to use the material. (JEH)