We investigate the relative merits of the Boston and Serial Dictatorship mechanisms when the timing of students’ preference submission over schools varies within the structure of the mechanism. Despite the well-documented disadvantages of the Boston mechanism Abdulkadiroglu and Sonmez (American Economic Review 93:729–747 2003), we hypothesize that a Boston mechanism where students are required to submit their preferences before the realization of their exam scores, can in fact have fairness and efficiency advantages compared to the often favored Serial Dictatorship mechanism. We test these hypotheses in a series of laboratory experiments which vary by the class of mechanism implemented, and the preference submission timing by students, reflective of actual policy changes which have occurred in China. Our experimental findings confirm the efficiency hypothesis straightforwardly, and lend support to the fairness hypothesis when subjects have the chance to learn with experience. The results have important policy implications for school choice mechanism design when students’ relative rankings by schools are initially uncertain.

Teenage childbearing is a common incident in developed countries. However, teenage births are much more likely in the USA than in any other industrialized country. Most of these births are delivered by female teenagers from low-income families. The hypothesis put forward here is that the welfare state (a set of redistributive institutions) has a significant influence on teenage childbearing behavior. We develop an economic theory of parental investments and the risky sexual behavior of teenagers. The model is estimated to fit stylized facts about income inequality, intergenerational mobility, and the sexual behavior of teenagers in the USA. The welfare state institutions are introduced via tax and public education expenditure functions derived from US data. In a quantitative experiment, we impose Norwegian taxes and education spending in the economic environment. The Norwegian welfare state institutions go a long way in explaining the differences in teenage birth rates between the USA and Norway.

This paper presents new benefit–cost estimates for the Tulsa universal pre-K program. These calculations are based on estimated effects, from two recent papers, of Tulsa pre-K on high-school graduation rates and college attendance rates of students who were in kindergarten in the fall of 2006. In the current paper, educational effects from these prior papers are used to infer lifetime earnings effects. Our conservative estimates suggest that per pre-K participant, the present value of earnings effects in 2021 dollars is $25,533, compared with program costs of $9,628, for a benefit–cost ratio of 2.65. Compared to prior benefit–cost studies of Tulsa pre-K, this benefit–cost ratio is below what was predicted from Tulsa pre-K’s effects on kindergarten test scores, but above what was predicted from Tulsa pre-K’s effects on grade retention by ninth grade. This fading and recovery of predicted pre-K effects as children go through K-12 and then enter adulthood is consistent with prior research. It suggests that pre-K may have important effects on “soft skills,” such as persisting in school, and reminds us that short-term studies of pre-K provide useful information for public policy.

Many traditional regions are being transformed as industries restructure. Paradoxically, the global economic downturn offers opportunities to innovate on policies to regenerate areas experiencing deindustrialisation, with one emerging focus being the development of ‘green skills’ to facilitate the transition of these places to ‘green economies’. In this article, we explore similar policy objectives (i.e. regeneration activity based (in part) on green economy transitions) across three deindustrialising/deindustrialised regions – Appalachia (United States), Ruhr (Germany) and the Valleys (South Wales) – to provide an account of the ways in which different regions with similar industrial pasts diverge in their approach to moving towards greener futures. Our argument is that the emphasis in such transitions should be the creation of ‘decent’ jobs, with new economic activity and employment initiatives embracing a ‘high road’ (i.e. high skill/high pay/high quality) trajectory. Utilising a ‘varieties of capitalism’ analysis, we contend that an effective, socially inclusive and ‘high road’ transition is more likely to emerge within co-ordinated market economy contexts, for example, Germany, than within the liberal market economy contexts of, for example, the United States and United Kingdom. In identifying the critical success factors leading to ‘high road’ green economy, the implications for any such transition within the liberal market economy context of Australia are highlighted.

In the last decade, the increased complexity of, and levels of access to, financial products and services, together with rising household debt and the funding of an ageing population, have prompted the State to place increased focus on financial education, with the dual objectives of regulating to enhance market efficiency and mitigating social welfare issues attributed to poor financial decisions. Financial literacy is crucial for young adults as they embark on life events involving major expenditure and debt, particularly for university students who have already accrued a debt based on Higher Education contribution scheme liability and who are making labour market decisions. This paper investigates the determining factors of personal financial literacy levels among a sample of university students at different stages of study and across diverse study areas including business, education, arts, humanities and the sciences; with some interesting findings for policy makers. It also provides indicative evidence of students’ preferred method of learning more about personal finance to facilitate the effective design of personal financial literacy programs.

State Medical Aid is a public health insurance program that allows undocumented immigrants with low financial resources to access health care services for free. However, the low take-up rate of this program might threaten its efficiency. The purpose of this study is therefore to provide the determinants of such a low take-up rate. To this end, we rely on the Premier Pas survey. This is an original representative sample of undocumented immigrants attending places of assistance to vulnerable populations in France. Determinants of State Medical Aid take-up are analyzed through probit and Cox modeling. The results show that only 51% of those who are eligible for the State Medical Aid program are actually covered, and this proportion is higher among women than among men. The length of stay in France is the most important determinant of take-up. It is worth noting that State Medical Aid take-up is not associated with chronic diseases or functional limitations and is negatively associated with poor mental health. There is, therefore, mixed evidence of health selection into the program. Informational barriers and vulnerabilities experienced by undocumented immigrants are likely to explain this low take-up.

This study explores how the distinctive Korean age reckoning, the Confucian age culture, and the school-entry-cutoff date affect the decisions of parents on both birth and school-entry timing for their children in Korea. There is a traditional method of age calculation in Korea that all people get one year older on January 1. Korea also has a distinctive age culture influenced by Confucianism. I find a substantial amount of birth and school-entry timing selections around the Korean age-cutoff date, January 1. The estimation results show that children born in January and February delayed school entry by 18.2–21.2 percentage points more than those born in November and December and 24% of births moved from one week before January 1 to one week after when the school-entry cutoff was March 1. After the school-entry cutoff has changed to January 1, children barely delay school enrollment, while more births are moved from December to January: 42% of births are shifted within the 7-day window. These behaviors are made by two motives: (1) parents want their children to have the same Korean age with their classmates because of the Confucian age culture; (2) they also want their children to be relatively older to have academic advantages.

In 1940, the Portuguese government approved a massive primary school construction plan that projected a 60 per cent increase in the number of primary schools. Based on the collection of a new dataset, we describe literacy levels in Portugal prior to the plan as well as the plan's strategy regarding the location of schools. We then estimate the causal impact of the increase in the number of schools between 1940 and the early 60s on enrolment and literacy, all at the county level. We conclude the increase in the number of schools was responsible for 80 per cent of the increase in enrolment and 13 per cent of the increase in the literacy rate of the affected cohorts.

Farm-to-school (F2S) local food procurement must be cost-effective to be financially sustainable without policy support. We test, among schools participating in F2S programs, whether market channel procurement strategies for local foods affect schools’ perceptions of whether meal costs decline as a result of F2S participation. Schools that buy local foods exclusively from intermediaries are 7 percentage points less likely to report lower costs from undertaking F2S initiatives. We further demonstrate that the probability that schools source local foods exclusively from intermediaries is influenced by the number of direct marketing farmers in their county.

Most students do not follow the ‘academic track’ (i.e. A-levels) after leaving school and only about a third of students go to university before the age of 20. Yet progression routes for the majority that do not take this path but opt for vocational post-compulsory education are not as well-known, which partly has to do with the complexity of the vocational education system and the difficulty of deciphering available data. If we are to tackle long-standing problems of low social mobility and a long tail of underachievers, it is essential that post-16 vocational options come under proper scrutiny. This paper is a step in that direction.

We use linked administrative data to track decisions made by all students in England who left compulsory education after having undertaken the national examination – the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) – at age 16 in the year 2009/10. We track them up to the age of 21, as they progress through the education system and (for some) into the labour market. We categorise the many different types of post-16 qualifications into several broad categories and we look at the probability of achieving various educational and early labour market outcomes, conditional on the path chosen at age 17. We also take into account the influence of demographics, prior attainment and the secondary school attended. Our findings illustrate the strong inequality apparently generated by routes chosen at age 17, even whilst controlling for prior attainment and schooling up to that point

The efficiency of public education is examined using a cost indirect output distance function. Efficiency estimates are obtained using data envelopment analysis applied to data from Georgia public schools. Georgia school districts utilize educational budgets with reasonable efficiency, achieving an overall efficiency of 98% with a range of 93%–100%. If all school districts were 100% efficient, outputs could be expanded 2%. This could be achieved by increasing funding $75.46 million state-wide in total for each of the 3 years. From the consumers' (voters') point of view, this result suggests that inefficiency costs Georgia, on average, a total of $226.38 million from 1994 to 1996.

This article summarises the 2010–15 Coalition government's education policy, contrasting their attempts to liberalise education markets with the desire to impose a highly traditional curriculum. The government's quite radical reforms have not been easy to implement, taking place against severe budgetary constraints and a minority Coalition partner with ambitions to improve the educational outcomes of children from low income families. It could be argued that the reforms have been successfully implemented, and there is little prospect of wholesale reversal by any future government. However, their combative approach to reform leaves a demotivated teacher workforce, a possible impending teacher recruitment crisis as the economy recovers, and a tangled web of accountability structures that will need to be resolved.

This study looks at the recent development (1998–2009) in the number of years of schooling that a 6-year old can expect to attend until their 30th birthday for the EU-27 countries. All countries have seen an increase in the number of expected years of schooling, which is driven mainly by increased tertiary enrolment rates. At the same time the education gap vis-à-vis the US has been closed. The dispersion of expected length of education among EU countries has also decreased. Thus, by this measure, education among countries has become more equal. In spite of this progress, some countries will find it difficult to meet their national targets for tertiary educational attainments for 30–34 year-olds in 2020. This is largely because the tertiary education participation rates of young males have been falling behind those of females in many countries. Focussing on the tertiary educational attainments of 30–34 year-olds leaves governments with little time to pursue policies with substantial impact. It would be preferable to supplement the educational attainment target for 30–34 year-olds with an enrolment target for 20–24 year-olds.

This paper argues that evidence-based policy has clearly made a worldwide impact, at least at the rhetorical and institutional levels, and in terms of analytical activity. The paper then addresses whether or not evidence-based policy evaluation has had an impact on policy formation and public service delivery. The paper uses a model of research-use that suggests that evidence can be used in instrumental, conceptual and symbolic ways. Taking four examples of the use of evidence in the UK over the past decade, this paper argues that evidence can be used instrumentally, conceptually and symbolically in complementary ways at different stages of the policy cycle and under different policy and political circumstances. The fact that evidence is not always used instrumentally, in the sense of “acting on research results in specific, direct ways” (Lavis et al., 2003, p. 228), does not mean that it has little or no influence. The paper ends by considering some of the obstacles to getting research evidence into policy and practice, and how these obstacles might be overcome.

Cet article analyse l'impact d'une augmentation des dépenses publiques en éducation sur la performance du système éducatif sud africain et ses conséquences sur le marché du travail en utilisant un Modèle d'Equilibre Général Calculable (MEGC) en dynamique séquentielle. Le système éducatif sud africain porte les stigmates de l'Apartheid et une intervention publique plus accentuée est l'un des moyens envisagés pour corriger les inégalités héritées de l'ancien régime politique. Nos résultats montrent une amélioration des performances des étudiants et des effets positifs à court terme sur l'économie. A long terme, la population sud africaine, et en particulier les African, devient plus qualifiée, mais l'économie ne créant pas suffisamment d'emplois, une partie de ces nouveaux qualifiés se retrouve au chômage.

A l'heure de l'économie du savoir et de la connaissance, l'éducation est devenue un enjeu majeur et l'enseignant a acquis une place centrale dans le processus de production d'éducation. Dans ces conditions, sont recherchés les moyens d'augmenter la performance des enseignants afin d'améliorer les résultats scolaires des élèves. La mise en place de structures incitatives (notamment la rémunération à la performance) est souvent suggérée mais les études démontrant l'efficacité des incitations restent mitigées.

Cet article propose une revue de la littérature théorique et empirique sur la façon dont les incitations affectent le comportement des enseignants. Les arguments pour et contre la mise en incitation des enseignants sont étu-diés. En particulier, nous examinons i) les difficultés à contrôler et à évaluer la performance des enseignants, ii) la question du travail en équipe dans un contexte d'individualisation de la performance et iii) le problème du multitâches lorsque les incitations portent sur seulement quelques tâches.

Pupils of religious foundation schools in England show superior educational performance over general (Local Education Authority) schools, the advantage having been estimated in previous studies at learning about a tenth faster for the average pupil by the age of leaving primary schooling (age 11+). In this study access to individual pupils' scores at SAT tests shows that the advantage of religious foundation schools is particularly great for lower-attaining pupils, with only the lowest tenth of those in religious schools attaining the scores of the lowest third in general schools.

The costs of higher education in the UK have shifted increasingly from the state to the student (and students' families). In 1998, a fee contribution of £1,000 per annum was introduced for new entrants to full-time degree courses. This paper examines its effect on debt, term-time employment and student satisfaction. The analysis uses data from a survey of two cohorts of students and identifies how the impact varied with student and course characteristics. Fees led to an increase in student debt (particularly for disabled students and for students who did not receive financial support from their families) and a decline in student satisfaction. No general impact on term-time employment was identified, but term-time employment increased for students who did not receive financial support from their families. Whilst for these two groups inequality was increased, fees appeared to lead to greater equality, in terms of term-time employment, between children of graduate and non-graduate parents. The paper discusses the implications for the introduction of top-up fees in 2006.

This paper examines the dynamics of the skill supply and its incidence on economic growth in the presence of education policies. When there are indivisibilities in the financing of human capital, small differences in the initial distribution of skills may greatly affect the stationary distribution: the economy may end up in a “low skill trap”, or in a high skill equilibrium. The model implies that for some ranges of initial distributions there will be intergenerational immobility. Finally, cross-country differences in long-term macroeconomic adjustment to education policies may be attributed, among other factors, to the existence of a congestion effect in the education system.