Private, Private Government-Dependent and Public schools. An International Effectiveness Analysis

This paper aims at estimating the effect on achievement of various types of schools: private, private but government-dependent and public ones. It is based on the analysis of Reading test scores of 15-year-old students surveyed in 2002 across OECD and non-OECD countries. The estimation of the effect of private vs. public school attendance may be biased by the existence of confounding factors. An obvious start is to use standard (OLS) regression models to isolate the effect of private/public status from the other determinants of achievement like family resources or socio-economic background. But regression estimates are highly dependent on the validity of the linearity assumption. Hence, the rational for using non-parametric propensity score matching. The main result is that private government-dependent schools can have a significant positive effect on 15 year-olds' academic achievement. Regarding private independent schools, the conclusion is rather the opposite. Our results also support the view that, in most cases, expanding the size of the more effective sector would improve average achievement.education economics, human capital, resource allocation, school choice, multiple treatments evaluation, propensity score

Leaving teaching in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium: a duration analysis

This paper aims at a better understanding of the factors influencing the decision of young graduates who entered teaching to stay in that profession. The field of research covers secondary education teachers in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium. The data analysed comes from an administrative database containing historical records of 50,000 individuals who started teaching between 1973 and 1996. The analysis is carried out assuming a proportional hazard model and using the discrete- time method initiated by Prentice and Gloecker (1978). One of the main results is that the risk of exit is dramatically more important during the first periods of employment. That this risk tends also to increase over time suggesting that drop-out among young recruits is higher now than it was in the past. Location and labour market conditions seem to be of little impact. The risk of exit is the same in rural and urban areas and across provinces wherein unemployment rates vary dramatically. Finally, the significant deterioration of pay conditions (in relative terms) since the mid-80's has had no significant impact on the risk of exit. Of greater importance are supply-side (organisational) elements like the level of centralisation of recruitment decisions or the level of asymmetry between tenure and non-tenure personnel regarding job protection, access to full-time positionsubliminal extant Smith economagic gmm

Free Higher Education - Regressive Transfer or Implicit Loan ?

Should access to higher education remain ‘free’ ? Theoretical answers to this question are at least twofold. First, public higher education is said to be regressive as a priviliged minority profits from extra human capital, and all the private benefits it generates, while the general public foots the bill. A frequent reply is that higher education students enjoying ‘free’ access are implicitly borrowing public money that they pay back when entering the labour market, via progressive income taxes. Using a simple lifecycle framework this paper produces realistic estimates of how much graduates are likely to ‘reimburse” society via income tax. Using Belgian data on higher education public expenditure and income taxes paid by both graduates and non-graduates over their lifetime, we show that the implicit reimbursement rate ranges from 37% to 95%. It is much higher for bachelors than master graduates, and for malesHigher Education Finance; Regressive Transfers; Implicit Loans

Leaving teaching in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium: a duration analysis

This paper aims at a better understanding of the factors influencing the decision of young graduates who entered teaching to stay in that profession. The field of research covers secondary education teachers in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium. The data analysed comes from an administrative database containing historical records of 50,000 individuals who started teaching between 1973 and 1996. The analysis is carried out assuming a proportional hazard model and using the discrete- time method initiated by Prentice and Gloecker (1978). One of the main results is that the risk of exit is dramatically more important during the first periods of employment. That this risk tends also to increase over time suggesting that drop-out among young recruits is higher now than it was in the past. Location and labour market conditions seem to be of little impact. The risk of exit is the same in rural and urban areas and across provinces wherein unemployment rates vary dramatically. Finally, the significant deterioration of pay conditions (in relative terms) since the mid-80's has had no significant impact on the risk of exit. Of greater importance are supply-side (organisational) elements like the level of centralisation of recruitment decisions or the level of asymmetry between tenure and non-tenure personnel regarding job protection, access to full-time positionLeaving Teaching, Duration Analysis, Analysis of Education

Private, Private Government-Dependent and Public Schools. An International Effectiveness Analysis

This paper aims at estimating the effect on achievement of various types of schools : private, private but government-dependent and public ones. It is based on the analysis of Reading test scores of 15-year-old students surveyed in 2002 across OECD and non-OECD countries. The estimation of the effect of private vs. public school attendance may be biased by the existence of confounding factors. An obvious start is to use standard (OLS) regression models to isolate the effect of private/public status from the other determinants of achievement like family resources or socio-economic backgroung. But regression estimates are highly dependent on the validity of the linearity assumption. Hence, the rational for using non-parametric propensity score matching. The main result is the private government-dependent schools can have a significant positive effect on 15 year-olds’ academic achievement. Regarding private independent schools, the conclusion is rather the opposite. Our results also support the view that, in most cases, expanding the size of the more effective sector would improve average achievement.educations economics; human capital; resource allocation; school choice; multiple treatments evaluation; propensity score

Family Income and Tertiary Education Attendance across the EU: An empirical assessment using sibling data

There is plenty of evidence across the EU to suggest that young people from poorer backgrounds are less likely to attend tertiary education than their better-off peers. This correlation is often used to justify monetary transfers to families with students. It is not clear, however, that these differences in attendance are caused by income itself rather than by parental ability, motivation, education, and other aspects of the young person's experience which differ between families, but are not a direct result of income. Controlling for observable family characteristics is a useful first step. But further developments are needed as families potentially differ in unobservable ways that are correlated with both income and attendance. In this paper we use families with several children to correct for unobserved time-invariant family fixed effects. Our results suggest the absence of parental income effects in Belgium and Germany, small positive effects in Poland, medium-size positive effect in the UK, and sizeable positive effects in Hungary.Tertiary education attendance, parental income, liquidity constraints