‘Good uni: quality nightlife’. How harvesting tweets opens up a new world of valuable qualitative data

The qualitative data that is freely available on social media platforms has huge potential. Drawing on his research into what Twitter can tell us about the popularity of universities, Geraint Johnes writes that Twitter and Facebook messages could be the key to valuable data

Higher education institutions' costs and efficiency: taking the decomposition a further step

A multiproduct cost function is estimated for English higher education institutions using a panel of data from recent years. The panel approach allows estimation by means of a random parameter stochastic frontier model which provides considerable new insights in that it allows the impact on costs of inter-institutional differences in the cost function itself to be distinguished from inter-institutional differences in efficiency. The approach used here therefore resembles in some respects the non-parametric methods of efficiency evaluation. We report also on measures of average incremental cost of provision and on returns to scale and scope.

EARLY YEARS EDUCATION AND SUBSEQUENT SCHOOLING IN RURAL INDIA: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

This study uses LSMS microdata to evaluate the impact of early years education on subsequent educational participation in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in Northern India. It is established that, alongside a number of economic and demographic variables, pre-school education has a significantly positive impact on subsequent experience. The result is robust to correction for endogeneity bias and clustering of observations.

Wage differentials and the responsiveness of labor supply: an international comparison

Data for Germany, Britain and the United States are used to investigate the hypothesis that women, especially married women, are less responsive than men to expected occupational wage differentials.

Going for growth: overeducation in a tax competition game

A model of international tax competition is developed in which taxes are raised in order to finance education which in turn raises income. It is shown that, in contrast to results from the tax competition literature, the outcome of a non-cooperative game can be to raise the tax rate, with the result that investment in education exceeds that which is globally socially optimal. This provides an explanation for the tendency for countries to emphasise growth as an objective in spite of what empirical studies tell us about the impact of income on happiness; it also identifies a new type of overeducation.

CHANGES IN THE CHARACTERISTICS AND SKILLS OF BRITISH YOUTH

Changes in the characteristics and skills of British youths between the mid-1980s and mid-2000s are evaluated using a method recently developed by Altonji et al. The main finding is that skills have increased over time in successive cohorts of young people. The improvement is, however, uneven, and those at the bottom end of the skills distribution have benefitted less than others. This implies, other things being equal, that the distribution of earnings will widen over the coming years.

Education and economic growth

Contemporary views on the determinants of economic growth place education in centre stage. Yet the way in which education affects growth is not yet well understood. This paper begins by surveying the recent literature on the factors that affect growth, paying particular attention to education. It then proceeds to estimate a comprehensive model of growth, testing its robustness across regions of the world. Policy conclusions are drawn.

Optimal Educational Investment: Domestic Equity and International Competition

We construct a family of models to analyse the effect on optimal educational investment of (i) society's preferences for equity and (ii) competition between countries. The models provide insights about the impact of a variety of parameters on optimal policy. In particular, we identify a form of 'overeducation' that is new to the literature, and provide a counterexample to a common finding in the literature on fiscal federalism.

Changes in the Characteristics and Skills of British Youth

Changes in the characteristics and skills of British youths between the mid-1980s and mid-2000s are evaluated using a method recently developed by Altonji et al. The main finding is that skills have increased over time in successive cohorts of young people. The improvement is, however, uneven, and those at the bottom end of the skills distribution have benefitted less than others. This implies, other things being equal, that the distribution of earnings will widen over the coming years.skills

It Was All Gonna Trickle Down: What Has Growth In India''s Advanced Sectors Really Done For The Rest?

A theory is developed in which the extent to which growth in advanced industrial sectors trickles down to other sectors is dependent upon, capital market frictions, migration, and the strength of interindustry linkages. It is shown that perverse results can arise, and that the efficacy of any policies that rely on tricke down is therefore an empirical issue. Using data from India, we investigate whether growth in the advanced sectors generates growth elsewhere in the economy, and find that it does not.