Could Do Better: The Effectiveness of Incentives and Competition in Schools.

This paper studies the effects of incentive mechanisms and of the competitive environment on the interaction between schools and students, in a set-up where their effort affects the students' educational attainment. We show that increasing the power of the incentive scheme and the effectiveness of competition may have the counterintuitive effect of lowering the students' attainment. In a simple dynamic set-up, where the reputation of the schools affects recruitment, and we show that increased competition leads to segregation of pupils by ability.students effort; schools quality; incentives in education; competition between schools; quasi-markets.

Study Time and Scholarly Achievement in PISA

We take a different look at the PISA 2006 data considering time input as one of the main ingredients for scholarly achievement. Across countries there does not exist any clear relationship between total time spent studying (sum of class time, homework time and time spent in private lessons) and scholarly achievement, while more individual study time (homework time or private lessons) seems to relate negatively to scholarly achievement. On the other hand at the country level, better performing students are clearly the ones spending more time in class and doing homework. However, when considering different groups of students, this positive relationship breaks down. For instance girls, students with a migratory background, and in some countries private school students spend more time doing homework but perform worse. In order to establish a causal relationship between time input and educational output we estimate a production function for education controlling for students' individual characteristics and different school environments. Results show that while the productivity of additional study time varies across countries, more classes and to a lesser extent more time spent doing homework have a positive effect on scholarly achievement while the effect of private lessons is negative or at most insignifican

The Effect of Family Background on Student Effort

While students from more advantageous family backgrounds tend to perform better, it is not clear that they exert more effort compared to those from less advantageous family backgrounds. We build a model of students, schools, and employers to study the interaction of family background and effort exerted by the student in the education process. Academic qualifications, which entail an income premium in the labor market, are noisily determined by effort and the student's ability to benefit from education, which in turn depends on her family background and innate talent. In a situation where schools set the optimal passing standard, two factors turn out to be key in determining the relationship between effort and family background: (i) the student's risk aversion and (ii) the degree with which family background alters the student's marginal productivity of effort. We show that when the degree of risk aversion is relatively low (high) compared to the sensitivity of the marginal productivity of the student's effort with respect to her family background, the relation between effort and family background is positive (negative) and students from more advantageous family backgrounds exert more (less) effort. Considering Spanish data and controlling for school fixed effects, we find that an improvement in parental education from not having completed compulsory education to holding a university degree is associated to around 15% more effort by the student(approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes of additional weekly homework). We also find empirical evidence consistent with our assumption that students' marginal productivity of effort varies with family background

Tratamiento de la hemoglobinuria paroxística nocturna: revisión bibliográfica y estudio de utilización del Eculizumab.

Introducción: La hemoglobinuria paroxística nocturna (HPN) es una enfermedad clonal adquirida causada por una mutación en el gen GPI-A. El eculizumab es el único tratamiento eficaz en HPN clásica y con un elevado coste. Objetivos: Revisión bibliográfica de HPN y estudio de utilización del eculizumab en los pacientes del Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro. Material y métodos: Se realiza una revisión bibliográfica consultando las bases de datos Medline, PubMed, Scielo y la editorial Elsevier; y se estudian las historias clínicas de los pacientes en tratamiento con eculizumab. El análisis estadístico se realiza con Microsoft Office Excel 2015. Resultados y discusión: La HPN está caracterizada por tromboembolismo y hemólisis mediada por complemento. El eculizumab es un anticuerpo monoclonal dirigido contra la fracción C5 de éste. Este tratamiento, evaluado en 8pacientes, ha conseguido independencia transfusional en el 25% de los casos y disminución de los requerimientos transfusionales en el resto de los pacientes. También desaparición de los síntomas de distonía de músculo liso en todos ellos. El fármaco es seguro y bien tolerado, de acuerdo a lo descrito en estudios anteriores, sin efectos secundarios significativos salvo el riesgo de infección meningocócica. Conclusión: La HPN es una enfermedad rara, su tratamiento con eculizumab tiene un elevado coste, y por ello se han determinado unos criterios de inclusión muy estrictos. En los pacientes analizados el eculizumab es eficaz en la mejora de la calidad de vida y de la hemólisis, sin embargo la hemoglobina únicamente presenta un ligero ascenso

Rentabilidad educativa en la enseñanza secundaria y formación profesional: un análisis comparativo entre Comunidades Autónomas

RESUMEN. El control de la oferta educativa constituye un instrumento clave con que cuentan las regiones para influir en los procesos de desarrollo. En este trabajo se estudia la eficiencia relativa del sistema educativo en el segmento de Enseñanzas Secundarias y Formación Profesional. Por un lado, se intenta explicar la rentabilidad aparente, aproximada por la tasa de rendimiento escolar de los centros educativos, en función de variables educativas (ratio alumno/profesor, peso de la enseñanza pública) y ambientales (PIS per capita, grado de urbanización). Por otro lado, y habida cuenta de los cambios producidos en el sistema educativo español en los últimos años, también se estudia la influencia sobre el resultado escolar del traspaso de competencias en materia de educación, mediante un análisis comparativo entre comunidades autónomas con competencias y sin ellas.ABSTRACT. There is a wide, both empirical and theoretical, literatura asserting that education supply control is one of the main important tools that regions have in order to influence on development processes. In this article the relative efficiency of the Spanish secondary school system is analysed. To cope with this task, on the one hand, a classical regression analysis is carried out for the Spanish regions in (1994/95) to capture the effect on students' school performance of factors as pupil/teacher ratios, weight ot public education, socio-economic status and other variables. On the other hand, due to some recent institutional changes occurred in the Spanish primary and secondary education system (e.g. competence powers transferred to some autonomous regions), an illustrative analysis of relative school performance among regions is also attained

Student effort: standards vs. tournaments

In this article we compare a competency system based on an absolute standard vs. a competitive grading system (tournament) in terms of the student effort level they are able to motivate. We prove, unlike other previous work, that more risk does not always discourage effort under a competency grading system. Furthermore, relative advantage depends crucially on the nature of the noise distorting academic achievement. If systematic factors prevail then a tournament is preferred to a competency system based on absolute standards, while if idiosyncratic factors predominate the last is more efficient. Comparisons are effective only and only if the passing standard is fixed at the efficient level that promotes in the student the highest optimal effort.

Study Time and Scholarly Achievement in PISA

We take a different look at the PISA 2006 data set considering time input as the main ingredient for scholarly achievement. Across countries, absolute time spent studying is negatively related to scholarly achievement, while a larger fraction of total study time spent in the classroom is associated to better performance. However, at the country level more total study time (class time plus homework time) is associated to better performance. When considering different groups of students, this positive relationship between time input and scholarly achievement breaks down. In particular girls and students with a migratory background spend more time in class rooms and doing homework but perform worse. We estimate a non-linear production function for education which allows us to consider marginal rates of substitution among various input factors for the production of education: different time inputs, family characteristics, and aspects of school environment. We find that compensating for less class time or lower socio-economic background by individual study time, is enormously time-costly or even impossible for students in Spain, as well as for students in the three best and the three worst performing OECD countries. Our results also show that in particular additional hours of class time rather than more teachers or better-equipped schools can compensate for a less advantageous family background.

The Effect of Family Background on Student Effort

In this paper, we propose an intuitive way of how to measure residential segregation. Individuals are located in different nodes on a network that are interconnected through links. Each period, an individual either advances to an adjacent node or she stops moving. In this setting, the segregation index is then defined as the probability that a randomly chosen individual meets an individual of the same social group in the neighborhood where her random-walk terminates. It is shown in a dual theorem that the segregation index is as a natural generalization of the isolation index to networks and that it is proportional to the PageRank index applied by Google in order to determine the importance of web-pages. Finally, the segregation index is applied to the Spanish 2009 census tract data and compared with other prominent measures.

Could do Better: The Effectiveness of Incentives and Competition in Schools

This paper studies the effects of incentive mechanisms and of the competitive environment on the interaction between schools and students, in a set-up where the students' educational attainment depends on their peer group, on their effort, and on the quality of the school's teaching. We show that increasing the power of the incentive scheme and the effectiveness of competition may have the counterintuitive effect of lowering the students' effort, with ambiguous effects on their attainment. In a simple dynamic set-up, where the reputation of the schools affects recruitment, we show that increased competition leads to segregation of pupils by ability.Students effort, Schools quality, Peer-group effect, Incentives