Mother or Motherland: Can a Government Have an Impact on Educational Attainment of the Population? Preliminary Evidence from India

In this paper, using data from the 61st round of the (Indian) National Sample Survey, we examine the relative impacts of personal-household and state-level characteristics (including government policy) on the likelihood of transition from one educational level to the next. Our analysis suggests that the most important factors driving these transition likelihoods are personal and household characteristics like gender and education of household heads. However, state-level characteristics and government policies have a significant impact on these transition likelihoods as well, especially for transitions from the lowest levels of education to somewhat higher levels. The odds of making the transition to higher education, especially tertiary education, are systematically lower for women than for men, for individuals in rural areas than those in urban areas, and for Muslims than for Hindus. An important conclusion of our analysis is that there is significant scope for government policy to address educational gaps between various demographic and other groups in the country.educational attainment, likelihood of transition, government policy

Good and Bad Institutions: Is the Debate Over? Cross-Country Firm-Level Evidence from the Textile Industry

Using firm-level data from nine developing countries we demonstrate that (a) certain institutions like restrictive labour market regulations that are considered to be bad for economic growth might be beneficial for production efficiency, whereas (b) good business environment which is considered to be beneficial for economic growth might have an adverse impact on production efficiency. We argue that our results suggest that the debate about the implications of institutional quality is far from being over, and classification of institutions into "good" and "bad" might be premature.institutional quality, production efficiency, stochastic frontier model

Impact of Reforms on Plant-Level Productivity and Technical Efficiency: Evidence from the Indian Manufacturing Sector

It is generally believed that the structural reforms that usher in competition and force companies to become more efficient were introduced later in India following the macroeconomic crisis in 1991. However, whether the post-1991 growth is an outcome of more efficient use of resources or greater use of factor inputs, especially capital, remains an open empirical question. In this paper, we use plant-level data from 1989-90 and 2000-01 to address this question. Our results indicate that while there was an increase in the productivity of factor inputs during the 1990s, most of the growth in value added is explained by growth in the use of factor inputs. We also find that median technical efficiency declined in all but one of the industries between the two years, and change in technical efficiency explains a very small proportion in the change in gross value added.efficiency, growth decomposition, productivity, manufacturing

Mother or motherland: Can a government have an impact on educational attainment of the population? Preliminary evidence from India

In this paper, using data from the 61st round of the (Indian) National Sample Survey, we examine the relative impacts of personal-household and state-level characteristics (including government policy) on the likelihood of transition from one educational level to the next. Our analysis suggests that the most important factors driving these transition likelihoods are personal and household characteristics like gender and education of household heads.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132999/1/wp987.pd

Biofuel Subsidies: An Open-Economy Analysis

We present a general equilibrium analysis of biofuel subsidies in an open-economy context. In the small-country case, when a Pigouvian tax on conventional fuels such as crude is in place, the optimal biofuel subsidy is zero. When the tax on crude is not available as a policy option, however, a second-best biofuel subsidy (or tax) is optimal. In the large-country case, the optimal tax on crude departs from its standard Pigouvian level and a biofuel subsidy is optimal. A biofuel subsidy spurs global demand for food and confers a terms-of-trade benefit to the food-exporting nation. This might encourage the food-exporting nation to use a subsidy even if it raises global crude use. The food importer has no such incentive for subsidization. Terms-of-trade effects wash out between trading nations; hence, any policy intervention by the two trading nations that raises crude use must be jointly suboptimal.optimal biofuel subsidy, Pigouvian tax, terms-of-trade, pollution externality

Does Institutional Quality Affect Firm Performance? Insights from a Semiparametric Approach

Using a novel modeling approach, and cross-country firm level data for the textiles industry, we examine the impact of institutional quality on firm performance. Our methodology allows us to estimate the marginal impact of institutional quality on productivity of each firm. Our results bring into question conventional wisdom about the desirable characteristics of market institutions, which is based on empirical evidence about the impact of institutional quality on the average firm. We demonstrate, for example, that once both the direct impact of a change in institutional quality on total factor productivity and the indirect impact through changes in efficiency of use of factor inputs are taken into account, an increase in labor market rigidity may have a positive impact on firm output, at least for some firms. We also demonstrate that there are significant intra-country variations in the marginal impact of institutional quality, such that the characteristics of "winners" and "losers" will have to be taken into account before policy is introduced to change institutional quality in any direction.institutional quality, firm performance, marginal effect, textiles industry

Is women's ownership of land a panacea in developing countries? Evidence from land-owning farm households in Malawi

Our analysis of a rich representative household survey for Malawi, where patrilineal and matrilineal institutions coexist, suggests that (a) in matrilineal societies the likelihood of cash crop cultivation by a household increases with the extent of land owned (or de facto controlled) by males, and (b) and cultivation of cash crops increases household welfare. The policy implication is that facilitating female ownership of assets through informal and formal institutions does not, on its own, increase welfare, if women do not have access to complementary resources that are needed to generate income from those assets.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133074/1/wp1055.pd

Analysing the macrostructure of spoken strategic communication: an application of argumentation analysis on high-technology newly-public firms’ earnings conference calls

A firm's ability to fulfil their strategic goals largely depends on how they communicate their strategies with stakeholders. Argumentation plays a prominent role in the process of communicating with stakeholders, with the intention of persuading them and achieving goals of strategic significance. In this respect, analysing argument structure is of particular importance, since determining the components that comprise an argument is a prerequisite for evaluating its acceptability and, consequently, its ability to persuade. Therefore, employing a framework that is specifically developed for the analysis of argument structure can help address questions that are not otherwise tractable. The relatively few available empirical studies in strategic communication employ frameworks that are not optimized for spoken communication. As such, there is scope to adapt/refine existing frameworks to facilitate meaningful analysis of spoken strategic communication. In this paper, therefore, we draw on existing frameworks and posit an adaptation that enables us to analyse the macrostructure of spoken arguments. We demonstrate the application of this adapted framework by analysing earnings conference calls involving three high-technology firms and financial analysts. By doing so, our study contributes to management practice and the literatures on strategic communication, as well as financial communications and investor relations