Suchergebnisse

Using the 2013 China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), we study the impact of accessing better schools – a 2008 inclusive education policy through which the central government mandated urban public schools to exempt migrant children from tuition and temporary schooling fees. Whereas the non-disclosure rule regarding geographical location of CEPS sampling units precludes the control of locational characteristics, we identify the causal effect of the policy by exploiting constituent elements of CEPS's primary sampling units. Namely, we only use non-migrant rural hukou children living in counties in the nationally representative sample as the control group (the never-takers), while, in the treatment group, we only include migrant children who are currently living in China's top 120 migrant-receiving counties or city districts, and Shanghai. We also distinguish migrant children who started urban schooling before and after 2008 as separate treatment groups of always-takers and compliers, respectively. Using the Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment (IPWRA) approach, we find that the average treatment effect of the policy on migrant children is around 0.18 SD, as measured by a standardised cognitive test score – a large effect. We also present complementary evidence that the average treatment effect tends to be larger for municipalities and provincial capitals, consistently with the notion that the (potential) value-added of attending urban schools is higher the larger the initial gap with rural schools.

We analyse how immigrants' level of social assimilation is related to their labour market outcomes. More precisely, we estimate the association between assimilation and employment, wages, underemployment, three measures of job satisfaction, overeducation and wages. Using Australian longitudinal data, we find that assimilation is strongly associated with employment and wages as well as a number of job satisfaction measures. We then split our data and repeat the analysis for before and after the financial crisis of 2008–2009. We find important differences in the way assimilation is associated with different measures of labour market outcomes under different economic conditions. Finally, we explore mechanisms that may underlie the results.

China has seen a massive higher education expansion, which the literature has dated to the 1999-2008 period with quantitative and qualitative outcomes. However, the consequences for the publication success of Chinese authors worldwide are not well studied. We review the respective Chinese higher education policies and document the dramatic rise in publication success, with a focus on the field of Economics. A substantial set of regressions and robustness checks confirm the understanding that the higher education expansion has indeed let to a substantial worldwide rise in scientific publications in refereed economics journals fueled by the general incentives of the reform, through research collaborations and other quality improving factors.