Suchergebnisse

Despite the centralised nature of the fiscal system in colonial India, public education expenditures varied dramatically across regions with the western and southern provinces spending three to four times as much as the eastern provinces. A significant portion of the inter-regional difference was due to historical differences in land taxes, an important source of provincial revenues in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The large differences in public spending, however, did not produce comparable differences in enrolment rates or literacy in the colonial period. Nonetheless, public investments influenced the direction of school development and perhaps the long run trajectory of rural literacy.

Using a new historical data set on the availability of schools, I analyze why there was so little primary education in British India, where as late as 1911 there were fewer than three primary schools for every ten villages. The findings show that greater caste and religious diversity contributed to both low and misguided private spending. Indeed more diverse districts had fewer privately managed primary schools and a smaller ratio of primary to secondary schools. Given primary schools were correlated with subsequent literacy, local factors that disrupted primary school provision had important consequences for India's limited achievement in basic education.

We study the effect of railroads, the single largest public investment in colonial India, on human capital. Using district-level data on literacy and two different identification strategies, we find railroads had positive effects on literacy, in particular on male and English literacy. We show that railroads increased literacy by raising secondary and elite primary schooling, rather than vernacular primary schooling. Our mediation analysis suggests that non-agricultural income, urbanization, and opportunities for skilled employment are important mechanisms, while agricultural income is not.

AbstractDid colonial policies in India deliver excessive returns to British investors? We answer this question using annual data on Indian securities trading on the London Stock Exchange. We present new series on market capitalization, capital gains, dividend yields, and total returns of railway securities from 1880 to 1929. The average annual total return on the largest and most important Indian railway securities was 3.7%. These returns were not excessive by any financial standard. Indeed, they were lower than the return on railway securities in North America, Latin America, and Asia. We also undertake an event study analysis to assess whether Indian railways significantly benefited British investors. When the Government of India purchased large positions in the private railway companies between 1880 and 1910, there were opportunities for profit making. However, we find no evidence of abnormal investor returns in the years leading to the purchase of railway companies. Broadly our findings call into question the extractive nature of colonial railway policy.

Using a unique dataset of U.S. military officers enrolled in graduate programs at the Naval Postgraduate School, we find students enrolled in distance education programs are 19 percentage points less likely to graduate compared to students enrolled in comparable traditional resident programs. Interestingly, distance education students receive a larger proportion of As on their courses. But, they are also more likely to fail and withdraw from their courses compared to their resident counterparts. The negative effects of distance education are worse for students enrolled in more technical engineering programs compared to less technical business programs. Although distance students are more likely to separate from the military after completing their education compared to traditional students, there are no significant differences in job promotion within the military between the two groups. Our results highlight the challenges of designing effective distance education programs in technical fields. (JEL I20, I23)

Draft: November 2017 ; Forthcoming, Contemporary Economic Policy ; The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/coep.12275 ; Using a unique dataset of US military officers enrolled in graduate programs at the Naval Postgraduate School, we find students enrolled in distance education pro- grams are 19 percentage points less likely to graduate compared to students enrolled in comparable traditional resident programs. Interestingly, distance education students receive a larger proportion of As on their courses. But, they are also more likely to fail and withdraw from their courses compared to their resident counterparts. The negative effects of distance education are worse for students enrolled in more technical engineering programs compared to less technical business programs. Although distance students are more likely to separate from the military after completing their education compared to traditional students, there are no significant differences in job promotion within the military between the two groups. Our results highlight the challenges of designing effective distance education programs in technical fields.