Three Essays on Education and Its Impact on Economic Growth and Development

Three Essays on Education and Its Impact on Economic Growth and Development PDF Author: Juan-Pedro Garces
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Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
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In this dissertation we explore different aspects of the relationship between education (as one of the main components of human capital) and economic productivity. In the first chapter, we measure the factors that contribute to the quality of education, following Hanushek and Woessmann (2007). An empirical research is carried out for the case of Chile, a country which implemented a very unique educational system in the mid-1980s, with a strong participation of the private sector in the provision of educational services. Amongst other factors, we study the influence of the public/private divide, the socio-economic level of the students and the pupil/teacher ratio. The quality of education is measured by the performance of students in standardised national tests administered to all schools in Chile. The second chapter explores the effects of population density on productivity and the synergetic impact of educational attainment and population density on the causation of technological progress and economic growth, following Becker et al. (1999). We devise a simple theoretical model to explain the channels through which education and density affect productivity, and we test it for a wide sample of developed and developing countries. Our empirical results confirm the positive impact of both population density—broadly defined—and the interaction of education and density on economic productivity. Finally, the third chapter of the dissertation examines the ongoing controversy about the roles of education and institutions as main contributing factors of economic growth. To try to establish a balanced view, we first assume as a premise that good institutional governance is indeed an important factor in promoting economic growth, as has been shown repeatedly in the literature. But at the same time, we investigate the causes of good institutional governance, and find out that educational attainment is one of the main factors contributing to most of the aspects of good governance.

Three Essays on Education and Its Impact on Economic Growth and Development

Three Essays on Education and Its Impact on Economic Growth and Development PDF Author: Juan-Pedro Garces
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In this dissertation we explore different aspects of the relationship between education (as one of the main components of human capital) and economic productivity. In the first chapter, we measure the factors that contribute to the quality of education, following Hanushek and Woessmann (2007). An empirical research is carried out for the case of Chile, a country which implemented a very unique educational system in the mid-1980s, with a strong participation of the private sector in the provision of educational services. Amongst other factors, we study the influence of the public/private divide, the socio-economic level of the students and the pupil/teacher ratio. The quality of education is measured by the performance of students in standardised national tests administered to all schools in Chile. The second chapter explores the effects of population density on productivity and the synergetic impact of educational attainment and population density on the causation of technological progress and economic growth, following Becker et al. (1999). We devise a simple theoretical model to explain the channels through which education and density affect productivity, and we test it for a wide sample of developed and developing countries. Our empirical results confirm the positive impact of both population density—broadly defined—and the interaction of education and density on economic productivity. Finally, the third chapter of the dissertation examines the ongoing controversy about the roles of education and institutions as main contributing factors of economic growth. To try to establish a balanced view, we first assume as a premise that good institutional governance is indeed an important factor in promoting economic growth, as has been shown repeatedly in the literature. But at the same time, we investigate the causes of good institutional governance, and find out that educational attainment is one of the main factors contributing to most of the aspects of good governance.

Threee Essays on Education and Its Impact on Economic Growth and Development

Threee Essays on Education and Its Impact on Economic Growth and Development PDF Author: Juan-Pedro Garces
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Essays on Development and Growth

Essays on Development and Growth PDF Author: Leonardo Almeida Bursztyn
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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This dissertation consists of three essays on development economics and economic growth. The first essay analyzes the schooling decisions of poor households with adolescent children in urban Brazil using a framed field experiment. It concludes that parent-child conflict plays a crucial role in these schooling decisions, with most parents being unable to control their child's school attendance behavior, in particular due to lack of observability of the child's actions. It also provides evidence that parental demand to control that behavior is not just to provide the child with skills but also to keep the child safe and off the streets. The second essay diverges from political economy models in which the rich do not want the poor to obtain education, using evidence from Brazil. Combining city-level evidence with a new survey, it argues that public education spending is low in countries like Brazil not because the rich oppose it, but because the poor prefer the governments to spend resources elsewhere. The third essay introduces endogenous and directed technical change in a growth model with environmental constraints and limited resources. It characterizes the structure of equilibria and the dynamic tax/subsidy policies that achieve sustainable growth or maximize intertemporal welfare. It generates new insights on the role and timing of optimal environmental policy.

Three Essays on Institutional and Economic Development

Three Essays on Institutional and Economic Development PDF Author: Kevin Sylwester
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Economic aspects of education

Economic aspects of education PDF Author: William G. Bowen
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Three Essays on the Evaluation of Development Policies

Three Essays on the Evaluation of Development Policies PDF Author: Maja Schling
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ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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This dissertation focuses on the evaluation of three distinct developing country policies, which, despite having been implemented in different parts of the world, are uniformly relevant to the field of development economics as well as effective policy design. Consequently, each essay contributes to the literature in its own way, either by evaluating a new and innovative intervention, by enhancing the theoretical understanding of policy-relevant interactions between public and private investment behavior, or by assessing the effectiveness of a broadly implemented, but yet unevaluated development policy. The results of the individual essays therefore convey one common conclusion; that a truly effective development policy must review carefully how its components interact with the behavioral responses of beneficiaries to identify the pathways through which impacts can be achieved.Chapter 1 examines whether computer-assisted instruction has a positive impact on the cognitive development as well as literacy and numeracy skills of early grade students. The analysis focuses on an educational intervention implemented in the rural region of Eastern Zambia that integrated technology into classroom activity in order to mitigate weaknesses in teaching skills and address specific unmet student needs. Using two control groups to compare the program's success to both standard government schools and lower-quality community schools, a difference-in-difference approach combined with inverse propensity score weighting is used to identify impact. While the program is unable to significantly advantage students in treated schools with respect to literacy, numeracy, and cognitive skills, estimates indicate that the program does succeed in leveling out initial differences, especially in comparison to government school students. This leveling by the program is accomplished at a third of the cost of government schools. An analysis of the heterogeneous impact further shows that effects are stronger for grade two students than for first graders. This is potentially because benefits take time to accumulate or because computer-assisted instruction becomes more important in supporting teachers as teaching becomes more complex and requires more materials. These results drive home the importance of integration of technology into curriculum and teaching methodology and how this can be a cost effective means to improve student learning.Chapter 2 examines how public education expenditures affect household spending on schooling and provides new theoretical underpinnings that highlight the importance of incorporating models of household decision-making processes into policy design. The study takes advantage of two country cases, Indonesia and Peru, which offer sufficient variation in public expenditures at the local level, and therefore lend themselves to assessing the important effect of government education expenditures at the district level on household spending on schooling. Employing a fixed-effects regression and an instrumental variable approach in Indonesia and a pseudo-panel approach in Peru, results indicate that a 1% increase in public-level education expenditures per school is estimated to decrease household-level spending on schooling per school-aged child by approximately 0.5% in Indonesia and 0.04% in Peru. This suggests that government spending may crowd out private investment in schooling, which represents an important indirect effect of any educational policy and can potentially diminish policy effectiveness. A closer look at household expenditures revealed that the specific (country) context will determine how parents reallocate their resources in response to changes in public spending levels.Lastly, Chapter 3 presents the first rigorous impact evaluation of a shoreline stabilization program in Barbados and attempts to assess whether shoreline stabilization investments indeed have beneficial effects on medium-term economic growth in Small Island Developing States through stimulating tourism demand and real estate development. The analysis relies on a carefully designed geographic information systems (GIS) dataset, which comprises extensive panel data from Barbados' touristic West and South Coasts on key infrastructure, beach characteristics, and real estate activity, as well as remotely-sensed luminosity data as a proxy of economic growth. The synthetic control method is employed to construct a counterfactual from a combination of all control beach sites and subsequently estimate program impact on per capita luminosity as a proxy for GDP per capita. Results indicate that even in the first three years after treatment, economic effects are positive and indicate a strong positive trend. This suggests that shoreline stabilization works may not only help preserve fragile ecological conditions, but further lead to sustainable growth in the local economy.

Three Essays on the Economics of Education

Three Essays on the Economics of Education PDF Author: Isaac McFarlin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Three Essays on the Economics of Education

Three Essays on the Economics of Education PDF Author: Cem Mete
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ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Three Essays on Economics of Education in Developing Countries

Three Essays on Economics of Education in Developing Countries PDF Author: Mustafa Şeref Akın
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Three Essays on Economic Growth and Development

Three Essays on Economic Growth and Development PDF Author: Rodrigo Priale
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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