Education Production Function and Class-Size Effects in Japanese Public Schools

Education production functions are estimated using student-level achievement data for Japanese students, with emphasis on estimating the causal effect of class size on students' academic performance. The empirical results show that students‟ test scores are strongly affected by individual and family backgrounds, whereas school resource variables and teacher characteristics have a more limited impact. The causal effect of class size, which is currently being politically debated in Japan, is investigated using a regression discontinuity design. The estimation results suggest that class-size reduction has a weak impact on the academic performance of Japanese students.Education production function, Class size, Regression discontinuity design, Japan

Measuring Education Levels of Farmers: Evidence from Innovation Adoption in Bangladesh

Education levels of farmers have been measured in a variety of ways in preceding studies. In order to examine whether or not different measures of education have different effects on the behavior of farmers, I first summarize the measures of education and then perform an empirical analysis. Although education measures examined in this paper have been used in many studies, their effects are shown to differ significantly in my empirical analysis: some variables have positive impacts on farmerfs behavior while others do not. This result suggests we have to pay more attention to selecting measures of education in empirical investigations.Education; Agriculture; Technology adoption; Bangladesh

What factors determine student performance in East Asia? New evidence from TIMSS 2007

This study investigates what factors determine students’ academic performance in five major economies in East Asia, using the dataset from the 2007 survey of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). We explicitly consider initial maturity differences, endogeneity of class size, and peer effects in regression analysis. We find that a student’s individual and family background is a key determinant of educational performance, while institutional and resource variables have a more limited effect. Peer effects are significant in general, but ability sorting at the school and/or class levels makes it difficult to interpret them in Hong Kong and Singapore.Educational production function, Initial maturity differences, Peer effects, Class size, Asia

Kinetic effects in strong Langmuir turbulence

Kinetic effects with regard to a one dimensional Langmuir soliton-like pulse are investigated. Though thus far mainly transit-time accelerations have been investigated regarding strong Langmuir turbulence, it is found that ponderomotive reflections (generalized nonlinear Landau damping) may play important roles also. The former may diffuse fast electrons up to relativistic energies, while the latter reflects slow electrons as well as ions that have speeds comparable with the group velocity of the pulse, and tend to form flat-top electron distributions at and around the quasi-soliton.Comment: 12th International Congress on Plasma Physics, 25-29 October 2004, Nice (France

Microbunching And Coherent Acceleration Of Electrons By Subcycle Laser Pulses

The pick up and acceleration of all plasma electrons irradiated by an intense, subcyclic laser pulse is demonstrated via analytical and numerical calculations. It is shown that the initial low emittance of the plasma electrons is conserved during the process of acceleration, leading to an extremely cold, bunched electron beam. Compression of the electron bunch along the longitudinal coordinate is naturally achieved due to the interaction of electrons and laser pulse. In this paper, we find the localized solutions to Maxwell's equations of a subcyclic laser pulse and use these to determine the acceleration of charged particles and we suggest future application for this acceleration mechanism as low energy particle injector and as electron source for coherent x-ray generation.Physic