Gender Observations and Study Abroad: How Students Reconcile Cross-Cultural Differences Related to Gender

The purpose of the current study was to gain a better understanding of how gender was observed by a group of students participating in a 3-week study abroad program entitled, Food, Environment and Social Systems, which took place in Australia and New Zealand in May 2006. I examined the messages students received about gender in Australia and New Zealand, whether the students were cognizant of these messages, and how they made meaning of the messages in light of their own gender identity

Examining How Residential Colleges Inspire the Life of the Mind

Residential colleges in large, public research universities purport to create a small liberal arts environment with the resources of a major university, but little empirical attention has been paid to their claims of effectiveness. This study examined one facet of the liberal arts ideal, the development of lifelong learners. Hierarchical Linear Modeling was utilized to examine student characteristics, residential college environments, and cross-level interactions. Findings illustrate that students’ motivations, coupled with an ethos of academic challenge and faculty/student interaction in their residential college environment, were associated with developing lifelong learners. Findings and implications are discussed in the context of existing research

The cyclicality of effective wages within employer-employee matches: evidence from German panel data

Using individual based micro-data from the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP), I analyze the cyclicality of real wages for male workers within employer-employee matches over the period 1984–2004, and compare different wage measures: the standard hourly wage rate, hourly wage earnings including overtime and bonus payments, and the effective wage, which takes into account not only paid overtime, but also unpaid working hours. None of the hourly wage measures is shown to exhibit cyclicality except for the group of salaried workers with unpaid overtime. Their effective wages react strongly to changes in unemployment in a procyclical way. Despite acyclical wage rates, salaried workers without unpaid hours but with income from extra payments, such as bonuses, experienced procyclical earnings movements. Monthly earnings were also procyclical for hourly paid workers who received overtime payments. The procyclicality of earnings revealed for Germany is of comparable size with the one in the U.S.. JEL Classification: E32, J31bonus payments, effective wages, firm stayers, unpaid overtime, Wage cyclicality

Working Time as an Investment? – The Effects of Unpaid Overtime on Wages, Promotions and Layoffs

Whereas the number of paid overtime hours declined over the last decade, a different trend can be observed for unpaid overtime work in Germany. We look at the future consequences for overtime workers, and therefore investigate the investment character of working time. We examine whether unpaid extra hours induce a higher likelihood of promotion and pay rise, and whether they reduce the risk of losing the job. Using longitudinal micro data from the GSOEP for the years 1991 to 2002 we find significant positive effects of unpaid overtime work on future payoffs, but also a positive impact on the probability of job loss. Therefore, we find only partial evidence for the investment character of unpaid overtime.overtime, unpaid work, promotion, wage growth, layoff

Emission trading beyond Europe: linking schemes in a post-Kyoto world

This paper assesses the economic impacts of linking the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) to emerging schemes beyond Europe, in the presence of a post-Kyoto agreement in 2020. Simulations with a numerical multi-country model of the world carbon market show that linking the European ETS induces only marginal economic benefits: As trading is restricted to energy-intensive industries that are assigned generous initial emissions, the major compliance burden is carried by non-trading industries excluded from the linked ETS. In the presence of parallel government trading under a post-Kyoto Protocol, excluded sectors can however be substantially compensated by international trading at the country level, thus increasing the political attractiveness of the linking process. From an efficiency perspective, a desirable future climate policy regime represents a joint trading system that enables international emission trading between ETS companies and governments. While the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) cannot alleviate the inefficiencies of linked ETS, in a parallel or joint trading regime the access to abatement options of developing countries induces large additional cost savings. Restricting CDM access via a supplementarity criterion does not significantly decrease the economic benefits from project-based emission crediting. --EU ETS,Emission Trading,Kyoto Protocol,Clean Development Mechanism

The Cyclicality of Effective Wages within Employer-Employee Matches: Evidence from German Panel Data

Using individual based micro-data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), I analyze the cyclicality of real wages for male workers within employer-employee matches over the period 1984-2004, and compare different wage measures: the standard hourly wage rate, hourly wage earnings including overtime and bonus payments, and the effective wage, which takes into account not only paid overtime, but also unpaid working hours. None of the hourly wage measures is shown to exhibit cyclicality except for the group of salaried workers with unpaid overtime. Their effective wages react strongly to changes in unemployment in a procyclical way. Despite acyclical wage rates, salaried workers without unpaid hours but with income from extra payments, such as bonuses, experienced procyclical earnings movements. Monthly earnings were also procyclical for hourly paid workers who received overtime payments. The procyclicality of earnings revealed for Germany is of comparable size with the one in the U.S.Wage cyclicality, effective wages, unpaid overtime, bonus payments, firm stayers

The Cyclicality of Effective Wages within Employer-Employee Matches: Evidence from German Panel Data

Using individual based micro-data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), I analyze the cyclicality of real wages for male workers within employer-employee matches over the period 1984-2004, and compare different wage measures: the standard hourly wage rate, hourly wage earnings including overtime and bonus payments, and the effective wage, which takes into account not only paid overtime, but also unpaid working hours. None of the hourly wage measures is shown to exhibit cyclicality except for the group of salaried workers with unpaid overtime. Their effective wages react strongly to changes in unemployment in a procyclical way. Despite acyclical wage rates, salaried workers without unpaid hours but with income from extra payments, such as bonuses, experienced procyclical earnings movements. Monthly earnings were also procyclical for hourly paid workers who received overtime payments. The procyclicality of earnings revealed for Germany is of comparable size with the one in the U.S.Wage cyclicality, effective wages, unpaid overtime, bonus payments, firm stayers

The Intergenerational Transmission of Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills During Adolescence and Young Adulthood

This study examines cognitive and non-cognitive skills and their transmission from parents to children as one potential candidate to explain the intergenerational link of socio-economic status. Using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we contrast the impact of parental cognitive abilities (fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence) and personality traits (Big Five, locus of control) on their adolescent and young adult children's traits with the effects of parental background and childhood environment. While for both age groups intelligence and personal traits were found to be transmitted from parents to their children, there are large discrepancies with respect to the age group and the type of skill. The intergenerational transmission effect was found to be relatively small for adolescent children, with correlations between 0.12 and 0.24, whereas the parent-child correlation in the sample of adult children was between 0.19 and 0.27 for non-cognitive skills, and up to 0.56 for cognitive skills. Thus, the skill gradient increases with the age of the child. Furthermore, the skill transmission effects are virtually unchanged by controlling for childhood environment or parental education, suggesting that the socio-economic status of the family does not play a mediating role in the intergenerational transmission of intelligence and personality traits. The finding that non-cognitive skills are not as strongly transmitted as cognitive skills, suggests that there is more room for external (non-parental) influences in the formation of personal traits. Hence, it is more promising for policy makers to focus on shaping children's non-cognitive skills to promote intergenerational mobility. Intergenerational correlations of cognitive skills in Germany are roughly the same or slightly stronger than those found by previous studies for other countries with different institutional settings. Intergenerational correlations of non-cognitive skills revealed for Germany seem to be considerably higher than the ones found for the U.S. Hence, skill transmission does not seem to be able to explain cross-country differences in socio-economic mobility.cognitive abilities, personality, intergenerational transmission, skill formation

Theoretical Foundations of Learning Communities

This chapter describes the historical and contemporary theoretical underpinnings of learning communities and argues that there is a need for more complex models in conceptualizing and assessing their effectiveness