Public Investment In Education Research Articles

Public Sector Pension Policies and Capital Accumulation in an Emerging Economy: The Case of Brazil

In many emerging economies such as Brazil, pension programs of public sector workers are more generous than pension programs of private sector workers. The opportunity costs of running generous public pension schemes for civil servants are potentially large in emerging economies that often suffer from low public investments in education and infrastructure. In this paper, we develop a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium framework to quantify these opportunity cost effects. We find that the efficiency and welfare gains of reallocating government resources from non-productive public sector pensions to productive public education and infrastructure investments are larger than the welfare effects created by classic public pension reforms that simply reduce savings and tax distortions by making pensions less generous. Calculating transitions to the post-reform steady state, we find that welfare losses for the generation born before the reform are offset by welfare gains by the generations born after the reform.

Public Sector Pension Policies and Capital Accumulation in An Emerging Economy: The Case of Brazil

In many emerging economies such as Brazil, pension programs of public sector workers are more generous than pension programs of private sector workers. The opportunity costs of running generous public pension schemes for civil servants are potentially large in emerging economies that often suffer from low public investments in education and infrastructure. In this paper, we develop a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium framework to quantify these opportunity cost effects. We find that the efficiency and welfare gains of reallocating government resources from non-productive public sector pensions to productive public education and infrastructure investments are larger than the welfare effects created by classic public pension reforms that simply reduce savings and tax distortions by making pensions less generous. Calculating transitions to the post-reform steady state, we find that welfare losses for the generation born before the reform are offset by welfare gains by the generations born after the reform.

Education policy and inequality: A political economy approach

Regression results show that more unequal societies tend to spend comparatively more on higher levels of education. In a two-period model with heterogeneous agents, this paper investigates the political determinants of this bias. In the first period, public education is financed by the incumbent government by issuing bonds. Investments in basic and higher education have conflicting effects on future labour income distribution and net returns to these investments depend on the tax and transfers system being selected in the following period through the democratic process. Our idea is that public investment in basic education, by decreasing future labour income inequality, may induce future policy-makers to redistribute resources through financial rents taxation, thus making unfeasible the issuing of debt to finance basic education. This will be the more probable the greater wealth inequality is.

Creative Discovery: Reconsidering the Relationship Between Entrepreneurship and Innovation

The severe recession of 2008–09 has brought to the fore deep concerns regarding the U.S. economy’s ability to continue to grow, let alone to keep pace with emerging nations such as India and China. The scale of job losses and the woes of sectors that are emblematic of the recession—particularly finance and automakers— have left many worrying about a bleak American economic future. Even those who expect a return to growth worry about the United States’ capacity to supply two essential ingredients: innovation and entrepreneurship. Such concerns have spurred increasing investment in broadband Internet connections, additional funding for research and development (R&D), and the largest-ever federal investment in public education—all steps meant to help build a new foundation for economic growth. Public-sector efforts of this type are nothing new in U.S. history. They date back at least to the Morrill and Hatch acts in the late 1800s and continue through the massive expansion of federal investment in R&D after World War II. 1 Such actions are generally credited with helping to ignite bursts of innovation and maintain steady rates of economic growth. In its renewed efforts today, the United States joins Singapore, the European Union, and others in forming deliberate strategies to provide what are considered semipublic goods: the knowledge and the people necessary for productive firms to innovate, create jobs, and boost economic growth. 2 It’s far from clear, however, whether the phenomena of innovation and entrepreneurship are adequately understood for these entities to be making such large commitments. Over the past several years, the work of the Kauffman Foundation has focused on understanding these phenomena and thereby seeking to create more successful entrepreneurs in the United States. During that time, the Foundation has conducted extensive research and developed mechanisms, such as the iBridge Network, to increase the pace of entrepreneurship. 3 Now, with lingering questions about the U.S. economy’s capacity to grow, concerns over the one to two billion people who remain in poverty around the world, and increasing interest in different types of entrepreneurship and innovation, the Foundation has embarked on a newly ambi

Effects of public education and social security on fertility

Introducing a fertility decision and child care cost into an overlapping generations model with public education and social security, we examine the effects of these public policies on fertility. We show that an increase in income tax, which finances social security benefits and public investment in education, increases fertility. On the other hand, with a constant tax rate, a change in the allocation from social security benefits to public investment in education decreases fertility and, with a constant social security tax, the effect of education tax on fertility is neutral.

Social democrats and the new partisan politics of public investment in education

This paper studies the impact on public education spending of social democratic participation in government. By means of a pooled time-series analysis of spending in OECD democracies, it is shown that social democrats have increased public spending primarily on higher education. This finding is at odds with simple class-based models of partisan preferences (Boix) that predict a preference for non-tertiary education. As an alternative, the notion of a ‘new politics of public investment in education’ (Iversen) is presented. From this perspective, political parties are not merely transmission belts for the economic interests of social classes, but use policies and spending strategically to attract and consolidate voter groups. By increasing public investment in tertiary education, social democrats cater to their core electoral constituencies (for example, by expanding enrolment) and, at the same time, new middle-class constituencies to escape electoral dilemmas and reforge the cross-class alliance with the middle class.

Productive Structure of the Pará region: An Input-Output Analysis (Estrutura Produtiva Do Pará: Uma Análise De Insumo-Produto)

The research objective is to conduct a structural analysis of the economy of Para filling a gap of research on the region. The analysis, which includes the relations of the state of Para with the rest of the country, was possible by the construction of the matrix of input-output of the reference year 2004. The main results showed that there is high dependence of the production system of the state of Para in goods and services for intermediate consumption of the rest of the country generating high overflow of the multiplier effect on employment, production and value added, which indicates the need to promote local industry of goods and services of intermediate consumption. The sectors with the highest multiplier of production in Para are Livestock and Fisheries, Food and drinks, articles of clothing and accessories and Artifacts of leather and footwear. Sectors of agribusiness, tourism and education have high capacity to generate jobs, such as agriculture, forestry and logging, livestock and fisheries, Articles of clothing and accessories, Lodging and food services, other services and public education. Products exported to the rest of the country and abroad have low value indicating a need for investment in the agribusiness sector. The sectors showing the highest values of the multiplier of value added is public education, public administration and social security, education and other services market, but they also have high end overflow. Investment in public education generates high returns on generation of employment and value added.

Exploring the Wealth Returns to Latino Higher Educational Attainment

A significant research gap exists in our knowledge of how educational attainment affects wealth building and intergenerational wealth transfers among Latinos. Wealth includes earnings but is a much wider and more fundamental measure of economic mobility. The education—earnings—wealth relationship is explored by constructing estimates of social gains and losses based on work-life earnings profiles for Latino workers. Findings indicate that public investment in Latino higher education results in social benefits by increasing public revenues and contributing to national prosperity.

Schooling and Political Participation in a Neoclassical Framework: Theory and Evidence

We investigate how the link between individual schooling and political participation is aected by country characteristics. We introduce a focus on a set of variables { namely factor endowments { which inuence the relative productivity of human capital in political versus production activities. Using micro data on individual behavior, we nd that political participation is more responsive to schooling in land-abundant countries, and less responsive in human capital-abundant countries, even while controlling for country political institutions and cultural attitudes. We develop these ideas in a model where individuals face an allocation decision over the use of their human capital. A relative abundance of land (used primarily in the least skill-intensive sector) or a scarcity of aggregate human capital will increase both the level of political participation and its responsiveness to schooling, by lowering the opportunity cost of production income foregone. In an extension, we further consider the problem of how much schooling a utility-maximizing ruler would choose to provide. An abundance of land tends to increase political participation ex post, and hence will lead the ruler to discourage human capital accumulation, a prediction for which we nd broad support in the cross-country data. Our model thus oers a framework which jointly explains patterns of political participation at the individual level and dierences in public investment in education at the country level.

Public investment in basic education and economic growth

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to visualize the relation between government spending on basic education and the human capital accumulation process, observing the impacts of this spending on individual investments in higher education, and on economic growth.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses an overlapping‐generations model where the government tax the adult generation and spent it in basic education of the next generations.Findings – It was demonstrated that the magnitude of the marginal effect of government spending in basic education on growth crucially depends on public budget constrains.Originality/value – The paper explains why some countries with a lot of public investment in basic education growth at low rates. In that sense if a country has only a lot of public investment in basic education without investment in higher education it may growth at low rates because the taxation can cause distortions in the agents incentives to invest in higher education.

Partisan Politics, the Welfare State, and Three Worlds of Human Capital Formation

The authors propose a synthesis of power resources theory and welfare production regime theory to explain differences in human capital formation across advanced democracies. Emphasizing the mutually reinforcing relationships between social insurance, skill formation, and spending on public education, they distinguish three distinct worlds of human capital formation: one characterized by redistribution and heavy investment in public education and industry-specific and occupation-specific vocational skills; one characterized by high social insurance and vocational training in firm-specific and industry-specific skills but less spending on public education; and one characterized by heavy private investment in general skills but modest spending on public education and redistribution. They trace the three worlds to historical differences in the organization of capitalism, electoral institutions, and partisan politics, emphasizing the distinct character of political coalition formation underpinning each of the three models. They also discuss the implications for inequality and labor market stratification across time and space.

Traders, Teachers, and Tyrants: Democracy, Globalization, and Public Investment in Education

This article develops a model of the redistributive political economy of education spending, focusing on the role of democracy and economic openness in determining the provision of education. I argue that democratization should be associated with higher levels of public education spending, lower private education spending, and a shift from tertiary education spending toward primary education spending. Furthermore, I argue that integration with the international economy should lead to higher public education spending, conditioned on regime type and income, and should push the balance between tertiary and primary education toward states' particular comparative advantages. These propositions are tested on a data set of more than one hundred states from 1960 to 2000, using a variety of panel data techniques, including instruments for democracy. The logic of the causal mechanism developed in the formal model is also tested on a number of case histories, including the Philippines, which shows great variation in democracy and openness, and India and Malaysia, which constitute unusual cases that lie “off the diagonal” of open democracies and autarkic autocracies.The author would like to thank Beth Simmons, Torben Iversen, Michael Hiscox, Jeffry Frieden, Jim Alt, Teri Caraway, John Freeman, Jane Gingrich, David Samuels, W. Phillips Shively, Mark Kayser, John Ahlquist, and Michael Kellerman for highly useful comments and criticisms. In addition, I thank the current and past editors, Lou Pauly, Emanuel Adler, David Stasavage, and Lisa Martin, and three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.

How Does Professional Education Impact the Job Outlook of Public Child Welfare Workers?

The objective of this study was to examine how public child welfare employees perceive their graduate social work education, whether they use the knowledge and skills gained, their work satisfaction, and their future plans. It was designed to examine the experiences of the New York City Administration on Children's Services (ACS) employees who were participants in the Professional Development Program and received support to study for their master's degrees in social work. The total number of respondents surveyed was 153, the vast majority of whom were people of color. In considering their motives for attending graduate school, 96 percent emphasized their desire to serve children and families better. These graduates were very positive about their academic and field experiences, with almost all saying they would recommend MSW training to others. There was a constant progression in their perceived knowledge and skill level over time. They expressed a mid-level of satisfaction with their current jobs, but higher satisfaction with the nature of the work itself. It was striking to note the respondents' attitudes about remaining employed at ACS. Only 13 percent of those who responded said they planned to leave within the next two years Almost a third (32.6%) said they thought they'd stay at least 5-9 years, and 39.8 percent said they would probably stay 10 years or longer. Satisfaction with the nature of the work and pay were the two strongest predictors of the length of time respondents planned to stay at ACS. These are important findings because they demonstrate that public investment in MSW education can have significant pay-off by increasing the knowledge and skills of public child welfare workers and encouraging long-term commitment to the work.

The New Deal and People's Art: Market Planners and Radical Artists

The New Deal and People's Art Market Planners andRadical Artists byDavid A. Horowitz RESPONDING AFTER THE 1932 election to 25 percent unemployment, falling demand forgoods, demoralizing deflation, and massive evaporation of investment, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal committed the federal gov ernment tounprecedented intervention ina peacetime economywith an agenda of relief,recovery,and reform.Banks, public utilities, stock exchanges,mines, agriculture, and working conditions all now came under regulation from Washington. Agencies like theTennes seeValley Authority (TVA), theCivil ian Conservation Corps (CCC), and theWorks Progress Administration (WPA) expanded or rebuilt elements of the nation's infrastructure such as Oregon's Pacific Coast Highway and Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge. New Deal policies backed industrial labor unions, enacted minimum wage laws, established the social security system, and provided work and cash relief to An earlier version of this essay was presented before the Labor Arts Forum on theArt of the Roosevelt Era at the Portland Art Museum, October 9,2004. 318 OHQ vol. 109, no. 2 needy families.Millions of otherswere assisted through low-interest loans and refinanced farmand home mortgages. Almost all of these activities, from social welfare subsidies to public works, were designed to revitalize or protect theeconomy by stimulating mass purchasing power. By the late-i930s, a coalition of retail,banking, and labor interests,led by Federal Reserve Board ChairMarriner Eccles, had worked with administration economists to enact fiscal and monetary policies embrac ingdeficit spending,huge public invest ment, progressive taxpolicies, and relief programs. By distributing government benefits, credit, and infrastructure grants, they hoped to stimulate pri vate investment, get people back to work, and reinvigorate themarket. As reformers,New Dealers believed that theeconomy could be salvaged through intelligent planning and constructive social action. One resultwas the social securitysystemofunemployment insur ance, old-age pensions, assistance to singlemothers, and help for thephysi callydisabled. The final example of their work was theGI Bill of 1944,the massive public investment in education, aid, training,and home financing for World War IIveterans thatfacilitatedtheriseof thepost-World War IImiddle class. The New Deal sought to accomplish these goals through a discourse empha sizing thegovernment's role inunifying thepeople around common citizenship and service to the nation. Although mainly directed toward European eth nics, particularlyRoman Catholics and Jews,in contrast toAfrican American, Hispanic, orAsian minorities, Roosevelt rhetoric identifiedcitizenshipwith "the people," whose strength and common purpose were to liftthe nation out of theDepression. Public artwas to be compatible with this newly emerging national culture.New Deal officials saw artas a public commodity.They believed thatthegovernment could take the lead in popularizing the production and consumption of art among ordinary Americans so thatthearts would no lon gerbe theprivileged preserve of therich. Articulating a philosophy of aesthetic populism, federaladministrators hoped tobring representationalartto the masses through works thataddressed theUvesof ordinarypeople and theexperiencesof an authenticallyAmerican culture. Artistic realism contrasted with the revolution inabstract canvases thathad begun inthe1910s with Cubists likePablo Picasso ? who painted images from multiple perspectives, a phenomenon viewed as anunwelcome symbolof social and cultural fragmentationbyRoosevelt arts officials. New Dealers preferred genres like themural ? which could deliver images topeople inpublic arenas likehousing projects, schools, hospitals, correctional institutions,or post offices. Roosevelt era projects often relied on printreproductions to make artaccessible to millions ofAmericans. The federalgov ernmenteven createdan IndexofAmeri canDesign?a collection of twenty-two thousand graphic recreations (usually watercolors or drawings) of handicraft artifactsdating as farback as the eigh teenth century. These exhibits were displayed in popular gathering places such as department stores.More than half of thefivehundred participants in Reflections on theNew Deal inOregon 319 ^^^^^^^H^r^^S??ku^H^^IC .Tiki ^ ??^^^HH^^^^^^H Martina Gangle's The Homesteaders, orceo/fwomural panels of 'TheColumbia River Pioneer Migration, was installed in 1940at Portland's Rose City Grade School under theauspices of the federallyfunded Oregon Art Project. thefederalgovernment'sPaintingProject were involved indocumentary photog raphyor applied arts likestagedesign or archivaldocumentation. Artwas further brought to thepeople through sixhun dred local art centers across thenation, including facilitiesinSalem, La Grande, and theOregon Coast. Inaugurated under the WPA in 1935, the Federal Arts Project (FAP) shared theconsumerist and populist aesthetic goals of theRoosevelt administration. There were some practical reasons for this approach. First, the administra tion believed that economic recovery depended upon restoration...

The problem of organ donation

The recent debate about organ donation was surprisingly heated. People complained about a ‘nanny state’ infringing on their post-mortem rights; some threatened to tear up their donor cards if the proposed change to an ‘opt-out’ system went ahead. ‘Opt out’ means presumed consent, or a legal system in which people no longer have to actively join the organ donor register (ODR) in order to become donors. Everyone is automatically treated as a potential donor, unless they actively opt-out. Supporters of presumed consent propose this system as a means of increasing the number of organs available for transplantation. Opponents say it violates their right to their body after their death. The government has recently appointed a taskforce to examine the proposed change to a presumed consent system, triggering a public debate about the pros and cons of presumed versus informed consent. This public debate, for all the strong emotions it arouses, has focused on the wrong issues. Moving to a presumed consent system is unlikely to produce the sorely-needed increase in the number of organs available for transplantation. The empirical evidence shows that opt-in (informed consent) and opt-out (presumed consent) typically yield similar results in terms of number of organs procured, so a change to opt-out will not in itself solve the problem of organ shortage. Instead of arguing about the type of legal system that ought to be in place, we should focus on investment in infrastructure, public education and organisational change, as these are the measures that will in fact increase the number of organs available for life-saving tran

The public returns to public educational investments in African-American males

This paper calculates the public savings (financial benefits) from greater public investments in the education of African-American males. Over one-fifth of each age cohort of black males in US is not a high school graduate. We identify five interventions that would—based on credible research—increase the graduation rate; we also report the public cost of each intervention. We then calculate the lifetime public benefits in terms of increased tax revenues and lower spending on health and crime. In present values, for a black male aged 20, these public benefits amount to $256,700 per new graduate and the median intervention would cost only $90,700. The benefit/cost ratio is 2.83. Simply equating the high school graduation rate of black males with that of white males would yield public savings of $3.98 billion for each age cohort. These results suggest that increased investments in education for black males at risk of dropping out of high school should be an economic priority.

The ratio of public investment in education in China

Based on cross-section data worldwide and time series data in China, the essay is intended to make an analysis of the factors which have impacts on the ratio of public investment in education by using econometric models and then the future ratio may be predicted. Conclusions are as follows. First, the proportion of fiscal revenue to GDP (gross domestic products) is the most significant variable to predict the variance in the ratio of public investment in education in China. Second, experience in middle-income countries should be given top priority when international comparison is made. Third, the ratio of public investment in education in China will be close to 4% in 2010, and reach 4.4%–4.5% in 2020.

The Rosenwald Schools of the American South (review)

T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 150 long enough to have prevented the movement of the two Union corps to Georgia later in the spring. The strengths of this work are many and the weaknesses few. Well written with the virtue of conciseness, it thoroughly discusses the issue at hand without becoming bogged down in minutiae. The author’s analysis is persuasive, and he includes adequate and numerous maps. Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign is a well-researched and well-written study of an often -neglected campaign and should be on the shelves of those interested in the Civil War. DAMON EUBANK Campbellsville University The Rosenwald Schools of the American South. By Mary S. Hoffschwelle. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. xx, 401 pp. $39.95. ISBN 0-8130-2957-0. The latest volume in the “New Perspectives on the American South” series from the University Press of Florida, The Rosenwald Schools of the American South tells the remarkable story of interracial public-private cooperation to better public education for African Americans in the South through new school construction. In 1912, Julius Rosenwald, Jewish president of Chicago’s Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Booker T. Washington of Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute formed an alliance that transformed public education and the built environment in fifteen states across the South. Riding the progressive era wave of school building, the Rosenwald building program helped construct over five thousand schools. By the time the program ended in 1932, its schools housed a third of the South’s black public school students and teachers, accounted for a fifth of the South’s public schools and just under one third of their property value . They helped dramatically increase school attendance, instructional hours, and literacy among African American southerners. Hoffschwelle, author of Preserving Rosenwald Schools (Washington, D.C., 2003) and Rebuilding the Southern Community: Reformers, Schools, and Homes in Tennessee, 1900–1930 (Knoxville, 1998), here envisions the Rosenwald building program and schools “as an evolving, multilayered network of people and buildings that produced significant landscapes of identity and social change” (p. 1). Rosenwald Schools explores “the processes by which people create, use, and invest meaning in the material world” (p. 3). Hoffschwelle interprets the program “from the inside out, focused on A P R I L 2 0 0 7 151 the internal development of the building program and looking out from it to the broader arena of black education in the South, to understand its distinctive and enduring power as an agency for change” (p. 2). The Rosenwald program motivated public investment and broader involvement in African American education in the South. In the process , it “created a stage upon which many different people could act” (p. 2). Rosenwald preferred matching grants to, as Hoffschwelle puts it, “philanthropy that relieved local people and governments of their own responsibilities” (p. 82). Of the moneys expended on the Rosenwald schools, 64 percent came from tax revenues, 17 percent from African Americans, 15 percent from Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Fund, and just over 4 percent from other private white donors. Concerned about a lack of professionalism and efficiency at Tuskegee, Rosenwald moved the program to Nashville in 1920 and placed it under the control of white officials. The progressives now in charge stressed the need for “model” schools. The change resulted in increasingly expensive plans that taxed the ability of the neediest black communities to match Rosenwald grants (p. 83). Thus, impoverished African American communities were doubly taxed to build schools for which their taxes should have provided. That so many embraced “sacrificial giving” confirmed their active and enduring commitment to “education as a cultural value and a social right” (p. 17). Rosenwald’s death in 1932 ended the program , forcing new school advocates to seek federal funding. Hoffschwelle stresses the program’s meaning for African Americans. A Rosenwald school building constituted a “new modern place in a southern African American community,” a symbol of “collective achievement ” expressing “not only the architectural vision of its planners but the community vision of the people who used its spaces” (pp. 245, 259). Communities named most Rosenwald schools...

Green Chemistry in California: A Framework for Leadership in Chemicals Policy and Innovation

This article summarizes a University of California chemicals policy report commissioned by the California Legislature. The report makes the case that long-standing weaknesses in the Toxic Substances Control Act have produced a flawed chemicals market in the U.S. that "undervalues" the hazardous properties of chemicals relative to their function, price, and performance. These market conditions have dampened industry interest in cleaner chemical technologies, such as green chemistry. A new U.S. chemicals policy will need to improve the flow of chemical information; enhance the capacity of government to control chemical hazards; and increase public investments in green chemistry research and education.

Heterogeneous Agents, Human Capital Formation and International Income Inequality

The paper examines the efiect of heterogeneity in individual human capital formation on cross-country income inequality. It considers a two-country model of overlapping generation heterogeneous economies with the following features: (1) individuals are heterogeneous with respect to inborn ability and parental human capital; (2) intergenerational transfers take place via public investment in education flnanced by tax, and parental education; (3) due to variation in individual human capital, we have endogenous heterogeneity both in labor supply and in parents’ participation in self-educating their ofispring. Besides exploring cross-country variation in public education, how its low level can lead to a poverty trap and how its high level can result in an increasing society’s efiective human capital, we study the efiects of capital markets integration, in equilibrium, on the intra-generational income inequality in both the investing and receiving countries.