Good Stuff to Read This Year

(Excerpt) Reading: the very word is like a bell/that tolls me back from thee to my sole self. Actually, Keats wrote Forlorn, but where I wrote Reading on the first line of this clean yellow sheet, the rest of Keats\u27 line came unbidden, and since I\u27m not by nature one to ignore the unbidden, I thought I\u27d better write it down. Now, why did it come? Well, I\u27ll go with \u27\u27words like bells -and I can think of all kinds of bells: reading\u27s a school hell-as in I\u27ve got to get the reading done or in That was a great book we read in class ; it\u27s an alarm, a wake-up call; it\u27s a telephone bell, a door bell, some guest come calling, invited or not; it\u27s a chapel bell, something holy happening, something that engages us full-length, then pulls us beyond supposition. For Keats, forlorn was a funeral bell, tolling to him; for me reading\u27s something I need to do to keep from some kinds of dying. I suspect that\u27s so for you, too

Short answer versus multiple choice examination questions for first year chemistry

Multiple choice (MC) examinations are frequently used for the summative assessment of large classes because of their ease of marking and their perceived objectivity. However, traditional MC formats usually lead to a surface approach to learning, and do not allow students to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge or understanding. For these reasons, we have trialled the incorporation of short answer (SA) questions into the final examination of two first year chemistry units, alongside MC questions. Students’ overall marks were expected to improve, because they were able to obtain partial marks for the SA questions. Although large differences in some individual students’ performance in the two sections of their examinations were observed, most students received a similar percentage mark for their MC as for their SA sections and the overall mean scores were unchanged. In-depth analysis of all responses to a specific question, which was used previously as a MC question and in a subsequent semester in SA format, indicates that the SA format can have weaknesses due to marking inconsistencies that are absent for MC questions. However, inclusion of SA questions improved student scores on the MC section in one examination, indicating that their inclusion may lead to different study habits and deeper learning. We conclude that questions asked in SA format must be carefully chosen in order to optimise the use of marking resources, both financial and human, and questions asked in MC format should be very carefully checked by people trained in writing MC questions. These results, in conjunction with an analysis of the different examination formats used in first year chemistry units, have shaped a recommendation on how to reliably and cost-effectively assess first year chemistry, while encouraging higher order learning outcomes

Does Disability Insurance Receipt Discourage Work? Using Examiner Assignment to Estimate Causal Effects of SSDI Receipt

We present the first causal estimates of the effect of Social Security Disability Insurance benefit receipt on labor supply using all program applicants. We use new administrative data to match applications to disability examiners, and exploit variation in examiners’ allowance rates as an instrument for benefit receipt. We find that among the estimated 23% of applicants on the margin of program entry, employment would have been 28 percentage points higher had they not received benefits. The effect is heterogeneous, ranging from no effect for those with more severe impairments to 50 percentage points for entrants with relatively less severe impairments.

Agricultural policies in India

"Since the early 1990s, India has undergone substantial economic policy reform and economic growth. Though reforms in agricultural policy have lagged those in other sectors, they have nonetheless created a somewhat more open economic orientation. In this study, we evaluate the protection and support versus disprotection of agriculture in India. Our methodology involves examining market price support (MPS) for eleven crops, the expenditures on input subsidies benefiting farmers (for fertilizer, electricity and irrigation), and product-specific and total producer support estimates (PSEs) over the period 1985-2002. We draw on the extensive price-comparison and subsidy-measurement data sets and analysis developed earlier by Gulati and his co-authors, often using disaggregated analysis for representative surplus and deficit states. This allows us to explore how key cost adjustments impact the results. Overall, our results indicate that support for agriculture in India has been counter-cyclical. Support for agriculture has been rising when world prices are low (as in the mid 1980s and 1998-2002) and falling when world prices are high (as in the early and mid 1990s). Our results demonstrate the increased importance of budgetary payments for input subsidies in agriculture in recent years. Yet, in the aggregate for both price support and budgetary expenditures over the period 1985-2002 the counter-cyclical dimension of agricultural policy dominates a clear trend of movement from disprotection towards protection. Using different variants of MPS and PSE measurment we have extended earlier analysis to demonstrate the impact of key assumptions on the calculations. These assumptions we argue are important to consider. For example, in the standard approach, the MPS for the covered commodities is “scaled up” based on the share of the covered commodities in the total value of production. If the commodity coverage is less than complete, as is often the case, the scaling up procedure leads to a total MPS of greater absolute value than the MPS for the covered commodities. This can result in PSEs of different sign than the non-scaled up version but is inappropriate unless market price support for the commodities not covered is similar to that of the covered commodities. Furthermore, we find that the standard procedure of computing the MPS through a comparison of the domestic price to an adjusted reference price based on observed imports or exports can be problematic. This happens when trade volumes are relatively small. In such a scenario a reference price based on observed imports or exports can lead to misleading conclusions. To address the reference price issue, we follow Byerlee and Morris (1993). Essentially the approach adopted is to compute the level of protection or disprotection based on a counterfactual reference price chosen on economic criteria i.e. the adjusted reference price that would exist in the country if the policy interventions were removed. The relevant price can either be the autarky equilibrium price or the import or export adjusted reference price depending on the relationship among these prices. We apply this modified procedure for six crops (wheat, rice, corn, sorghum, sugar and groundnuts). The choice of the crops is dictated by the fact that India has been near self-sufficiency and there have been changes in the direction of trade over the period of analysis. The magnitudes of estimated support for agriculture obtained in this paper are important for several reasons. The estimates confirm that high levels of subsidies were required for India to export wheat or rice in recent years, a conclusion reached by several other studies. However, we report less disprotection of Indian agriculture in the 1990s than in earlier studies. Partly this difference is explained by the modified procedure for choice of a reference price. A large component of this difference can be accounted for by whether or not the scaling up procedure is invoked. There are also fertile areas for future research. Estimates of adjustment costs used in domestic-to-border price comparisons, such as transportation and processing costs or marketing margins, are crucial variables in the analysis and merit being re-examined and further updated. Resolving what are the most reasonable assumptions about reference prices, or extending the analysis to additional crops and livestock to reduce uncertainty in future assessments will also contribute to fuller understanding of the net stance of policy toward agriculture and how it has evolved over time" Authors' AbstractSouth Asia ,South Asia and Central Asia ,Agricultural policy ,Producer Support Estimates (PSEs) ,Agricultural support ,Agricultural production ,Scaling up ,

Domestic support to agriculture in the European Union and the United States

In this study, we outline the farm policy changes in the European Union, EU, and the United States, US, since 1996 and compare their levels of support under various policies. The producer support estimates for the EU are more than twice that of the US, although the value of EU agricultural production is only 30% more than the US production value. In the EU, reductions in the intervention (support) prices for cereals, oilseeds and beef sector have been compensated by increased direct payments, i.e., payments based on historical acreage and yield or animal head counts. In 1996, the US eliminated target prices and deficiency payments for major crops, and acreage set-sides for supply control. They have been replaced with fixed and emergency payments. However price floors (loan rate with deficiency payments) have been retained for major crops. The sugar and dairy sector policies of the EU and the US have undergone few changes since 1996....The initial EU and US agricultural proposals for the Doha round focused on reducing market access barriers and export subsidies, but refrained from limiting domestic support measures. Developing countries' effective opposition to these proposals led to the collapse of the 2003 WTO Ministerial Meeting at Cancun, Mexico. The recently announced Doha Work Program proposes complete elimination of export subsidies and significant reductions in market access barriers. In the case of domestic support, developing countries' views such as the reductions in product and non-product specific de minimis provisions, and the criteria for blue box payments are reflected in the proposal. At the same time, developed countries' views on the continued placement of direct payments in either blue or green box have been included in the proposal. However, agreement on the extent of reductions and the specific modalities is expected in the next 16 months. The final agreement, scheduled for presentation to members at the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Conference in December 2005, likely depends on whether or not the new proposals and their modalities would result in meaningful limits on domestic support.Agricultural price supports ,

Producer Support Estimates (PSEs) for agriculture in developing countries

In many developing countries, governments rely on price-based measures (including border protection and subsidies on inputs and outputs) more than on budgetary payments to achieve agricultural policy objectives defined to include price stabilization or food self-sufficiency. Assessing the effects of these price-based measures is thus important to evaluating whether agriculture is being protected or disprotected by commodity or in the aggregate. This aspect of producer support estimates (PSEs) is simple to describe conceptually but difficult to evaluate well empirically. Developing countries may face higher international transport and port costs for imports and exports than developed countries or may have substantial internal handling, transportation and processing costs. Separating these structural effects on farmers from agricultural policy effects that drive a wedge between the domestic farmgate price and an adjusted international reference price requires extensive data and judgments. In this paper, we describe the PSE measurement issues and illustrate their importance. We estimate product-specific market price support, budget expenditures and PSEs for three important agricultural commodities (wheat, rice and corn) in India (1985-2002), using representative disaggregated state-level results, and for five commodities (wheat, rice, corn, soybeans and sugar) in China (1995-2001). The results for India suggest that ignoring factors such as internal transport costs, marketing margins and quality differences can result in inaccurate price support estimates and PSEs that may be of the wrong sign. We also explore how relaxing or changing certain standard PSE assumptions (such as altering the “scaling up” procedure or computing the PSE as a percentage of value of production at world reference prices) can have large impacts on the results. Finally, for commodities that are near self-sufficiency, we follow Byerlee and Morris (1993) and define a relevant adjusted reference price based on the relationship between an estimated autarky price and the import and export prices. We discuss this procedure and use the resulting reference prices to compute the market price support component of the PSE for India. Based on our three-commodity PSEs for India, support is largely counter-cyclical, rising when world prices are low (as in the late 1980s and 1990s) and falling when world prices strengthen (as in the mid 1990s). From our more preliminary five-commodity PSE estimates for China, a trend decline in disprotection is more evident. Further research is needed to confirm and elaborate on these results.

The Effect of Schooling and Ability on Achievement Test Scores

This paper develops two methods for estimating the effect of schooling on achievement test scores that control for the endogeneity of schooling by postulating that both schooling and test scores are generated by a common unobserved latent ability. These methods are applied to data on schooling and test scores. Estimates from the two methods are in close agreement. We find that the effects of schooling on test scores are roughly linear across schooling levels. The effects of schooling on measured test scores are slightly larger for lower latent ability levels. We find that schooling increases the AFQT score on average between 2 and 4 percentage points, roughly twice as large as the effect claimed by Herrnstein and Murray (1994) but in agreement with estimates produced by Neal and Johnson (1996) andWinship and Korenman (1997). We extend the previous literature by estimating the impact of schooling on measured test scores at various quantiles of the latent ability distribution.

The effect of schooling and ability on achievement test scores

This paper develops two methods for estimating the effect of schooling on achievement test scores that control for endogeneity of schooling by postulating that both schooling and test scores are generated by a common unobserved latent ability. These methods are applied to data on schooling and test scores. Estimates from the two methods are in close agreement. We find that the effects of schooling on test scores are roughly linear across schooling levels. The effects of schooling on measured test scores are slightly larger for lower latent ability levels. We find that schooling increases the AFQT score on average between 2 and 4 percentage points, roughly twice as large as the effect claimed by Herrnstein and Murray (1994) but in agreement with estimates produced by Neal and Johnson (1996) and Winship and Korenman (1997). We extend the previous literature by estimating the impact of schooling on measured test scores at various quantiles of the latent ability distribution.Education; ability; latent variables; selection; MCMC

AGRICULTURAL POLICY INTERVENTIONS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: MAPPING THE NATURE, DEGREE AND PROGRESS OF REFORMS

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/16/04.International Development,