Family Labor Participation and Child Care Decisions: The Role of Grannies

One of the most significant long term trends in the labor market in most OECD countries has been the increase in the proportion of working mothers. However, not all countries show the same pattern. Countries in Southern Europe (Italy, Greece and Spain) show an average participation rate of about 45% whereas the participation rates in Northern countries (Denmark, Sweden) are around 75%. The characteristics of child care systems also differ significantly across OECD countries. This along with the characteristics of the labor market may have led families to get the necessary social services in an alternative way, i.e. through grandmothers. In this paper I analyze how and to what extent child care is provided by grandmothers and how this task is combined with paid work in 10 European countries. Moreover, I study whether the child care provided by grandmothers is encouraging the labor participation of their sons and, especially, their daughters. For this aim, I use a sample drawn from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) which provides detailed information about grandmothers (the units of observation) as well as their offspring with children. The econometric model considered takes into account the simultaneity of labor market decisions and care-giving activities, while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in care-giving decisions. Here I exploit the fact that, information about multiple offsprings with children is usually available for each grandmother. I find a negative and very significant effect of participating in the labor market on the probability of taking care of the grandchildren on a regular basis. I also find evidence that, for some countries, the child care provided by grandmothers has a positive effect on the labor participation of their daughters

Publishing performance in economics: Spanish rankings (1990-1999)

This paper contributes to the growing literature that analyses the Spanish publishing performance in Economics throughout the 1990s. Several bibliometric indicators are used in order to provide Spanish rankings (of both institutions and individual authors) based on Econlit journals. Further, lists of the ten most influential authors and articles over that period, in terms of citations, are reported.Publicad

Alternative Measures of Non-Cognitive Skills and Their Effect on Retirement Preparation and Financial Capability

Social science, more than ever, is drawing upon the insights of personality psychology. Though researchers now know that non-cognitive skills and personality traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, self-control, or a growth mindset could be important for life outcomes, they struggle to find reliable measures of these skills. Self-reports are often used for analysis but these measures have been found to be affected by important biases. We study the validity of innovative more robust measures of non-cognitive skills based on performance tasks. Our first proposed measure is an adaptation, for the adult population, of the Academic Diligence Task (ADT) developed and validated among students by Galla et al. (2014). For our second type of performance task measures of non-cognitive skills, we argue that questionnaires themselves can be seen as performance tasks, such that measures of survey effort, e.g. item non-response rates and degree of carelessness in answering, could lead to meaningful measures of non-cognitive skills. New measures along with self-reports are then used to study the role of non-cognitive skills and personality traits on individual’s preparation for retirement and financial capability. In a world where individuals are increasingly asked to take responsibility of preparing for retirement and when available financial products to do so are growing in sophistication, a better understanding of how non-cognitive skills influence retirement preparation could help effective policy design

RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS IN SPAIN: RANKINGS OF INSTITUTIONS AND AUTHORS

In this paper we analyse the research in Economics in Spain during the 1990s considering the contributions of both Spanish and foreign economist who have worked in Spain during that period. To do so, we use different bibliometric indicators in order to elaborate rankings for both institutions and researchers. These rankings can be useful for several potentials users such as: a) Evaluation Agencies and Funding Bodies to help them in grant-allocation decisions; b) Graduate students who whish to choose the right institution to complete their postgraduate education, and c) Young Ph Ds who have entered the academic job market and need information about the research perfomance of different institutions.

Teacher Effectiveness in Urban High Schools

This research examines whether teacher licensure test scores and other teacher qualifications affect high school student achievement. The results are based on longitudinal student-level data from Los Angeles. The achievement analysis uses a value-added approach that adjusts for both student and teacher fixed effects. The results show little relationship between traditional measures of teacher quality (e.g., experience and education level) and student achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) or math. Similarly, teacher aptitude and subject-matter knowledge, as measured on state licensure tests, have no significant effects on student achievement. Achievement outcomes differ substantially from teacher to teacher, however, and the effects of a good ELA or math teacher spillover from one subject to the other

Sexual Maturity and Spawning of the Greenland Halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) From Flemish Pass Area

10 páginas, 4 figuras, 3 tablas.-- Scientific Council MeetingPeer reviewe

Publishing performance in economics: Spanish rankings (1990-1999).

This paper contributes to the growing literature that analyses the Spanish publishing performance in Economics throughout the 1990s. Several bibliometric indicators are used in order to provide Spanish rankings (of both institutions and individual authors) based on Econlit journals. Further, lists of the ten most influential authors and articles over that period, in terms of citations, are reported.Rankings; economics; Bibliometric indicators;

Accounting for Heterogeneous Returns in Sequential Schooling Decisions

This paper presents a method for estimating returns to schooling that takes into account that returns may be heterogeneous among agents and that educational decisions are made sequentially.A sequential decision model is interesting because it explicitly considers that the level of education of each individual is the result of previous schooling choices and so, the variation of supply-side instruments over time will emerge as a source of identification of the desired parameters.A test for heterogeneity in returns from sequential schooling decisions is developed and expressions for Marginal Treatment Effects are obtained in this context.Returns are estimated and tested from cross-sectional data from a Spanish household survey that contains rich family background information and useful instruments.This data is stratified by level of education and so estimators are adapted to take this feature into account.Finally, this methodology is used to analyze possible effects of the 1970 reform of the Spanish education system.schooling;selection models;heterogeneity;sequential decisions;policy evaluation JEL classifications

Teacher Effectiveness in Urban High Schools

This research examines whether teacher licensure test scores and other teacher qualifications affect high school student achievement. The results are based on longitudinal student-level data from Los Angeles. The achievement analysis uses a value-added approach that adjusts for both student and teacher fixed effects. The results show little relationship between traditional measures of teacher quality (e.g., experience and education level) and student achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) or math. Similarly, teacher aptitude and subject-matter knowledge, as measured on state licensure tests, have no significant effects on student achievement. Achievement outcomes differ substantially from teacher to teacher, however, and the effects of a good ELA or math teacher spillover from one subject to the other

Local Labor Market Conditions, Principals’ Leadership, Conscientiousness, and Beginning Teacher Turnover: A Study During the Great Recession

An abundance of literature sheds light on which factors determine teacher turnover, but it has yet to consider the role that local labor market conditions may play in teachers’ turnover decisions and how these labor market conditions may influence the quality of teachers who might be retained. The effect of local labor market conditions on teacher turnover could be relevant especially in times of high economic instability like the Great Recession. To study the determinants of teacher turnover, we match the Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study (BTLS) with local unemployment rates from the USC Great Recession Indicators Database (GRID). We also build proxy measures of teachers’ conscientiousness with levels of survey effort on the baseline BTLS survey. Our results show that, in the absence of changes in unemployment, teachers who present lower levels of conscientiousness, by means of lower effort in the baseline survey, also present lower probabilities of teacher turnover during their first years of teaching.However, higher conscientious teachers seem to be better retained when there is more instability in their local labor markets. Higher quality principals appear to help retain teachers, but they seem to be more effective at retaining those teachers who show lower levels of conscientiousness on their baseline survey