Women's work histories in Italy: education as investment in reconciliation and legitimacy?

Within pre-enlargement Europe, Italy records one of the widest employment rate gaps between highly and poorly educated women, as well one of the largest differences in the share, among working women, of public sector employment. Building on these stylized facts and using the Longitudinal Survey of Italian Households (ILFI), we investigate the working trajectories of three cohorts of Italian women born between 1935 and 1964 and observed from their first job until they are in their forties. We use mainly, but not exclusively, event history analysis in order to identify the main factors that influence entry into and exit from paid work over the life course. Our results suggest that in the Italian context, where employment protection policies have also been used as surrogate measures to favour reconciliation between family and work, and where traditional gender norms still persist, education is so important for women's employment decisions because it represents an investment in 'reconciliation' and 'work legitimacy' over and above investment in human capital.

Intergovernmental Transfers and Elementary Education: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Brazil

Whether providing additional resources to local communities leads to improved public services and better outcomes more generally, given existing management capacity and incentive and accountability structures, is an unresolved yet important question for public policy. This paper uses a regression-discontinuity design to evaluate the effect of unrestricted fiscal transfers on local spending (including on education), schooling and learning in Brazil. Results show that transfers increase local public spending almost one for one with no evidence of crowding out own revenue or other revenue sources. Extra per capita transfers of 1000 Reais lead to about 0.42 additional years of elementary schooling and student literacy rates increase by about 5.6 percentage points on average. Part of this effect arises through higher teacher-student ratios in municipal elementary school systems. Results also suggest that additional resources have stronger effects in more rural and less developed parts of Brazil.

Management information systems: The balanced scorecard in Spanish public universities

Organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the need for management information systems, due largely to the changing environment and a continuous process of globalisation. All of this means that managers need to adapt the structures of their organisations to the changes and, therefore, to plan, control and manage better. The Spanish public university cannot avoid this changing (demographic, economic and social changes) and globalising (among them the convergence of European qualifications) environment, to which we must add the complex organisation structure, characterised by a high dispersion of authority for decision making in different collegiate and unipersonal organs. It seems obvious that these changes must have repercussions on the direction, organisation and management structures of those public higher education institutions, and it seems natural that, given this environment, the universities must adapt their present management systems to the demand by society for the quality and suitability of the services they provide.

Are changes in education important for the wage premium and unemployment?

A generalized rise in unemployment rates for both college and high-schoolgraduates, a widening education wage premium, and a sharp increase incollege education participation are characteristic features of thetransformations of the U.S. labor market between 1970 and 1990. This paperinvestigates the interactions between these changes in the labor marketand in educational attainment. First, it develops an equilibrium searchand matching model of the labor market where education is endogenouslydetermined. Second, calibrated versions of the model are used to studyquantitatively whether either a skill-biased change in technology or amismatch shock can explain the above facts. The skill-biased shock accountsfor a considerable part of the changes but fails to produce the increasein unemployment for the educated labor force. The mismatch shock explainsinstead much of the change in the four variables, including the wage premium.

How different are returns to education? Evidence from German school choices

This study presents estimates of returns to post-secondary educationand wage differentials among graduates fromdifferent secondary schoolsin Germany. I use an empirical model that captures the basic features ofthe German education system. It controls for selection into post-secondaryeducation and treats latter as endogenous in the wage equation. Myresults show that OLS estimates are severely biased. The direction ofthe bias depends on the secondary school type. Annual returns topost-secondary education differ significantly: they are eight timeshigher for graduates from the highest secondary school than for graduatesfrom the lowest secondary school.

Radial measures of public services deficit for regional allocation of public funds

The goal of this paper is to present an optimal resource allocation model for the regional allocation of public service inputs. Theproposed solution leads to maximise the relative public service availability in regions located below the best availability frontier, subject to exogenous budget restrictions and equality ofaccess for equal need criteria (equity-based notion of regional needs). The construction of non-parametric deficit indicators is proposed for public service availability by a novel application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models, whose results offer advantages for the evaluation and improvement of decentralised public resource allocation systems. The method introduced in this paper has relevance as a resource allocation guide for the majority of services centrally funded by the public sector in a given country, such as health care, basic and higher education, citizen safety, justice, transportation, environmental protection, leisure, culture, housing and city planning, etc.

The long-run and intergenerational education impacts of intergovernmental transfers

This paper provides regression discontinuity evidence on long-run and intergenerational education impacts of a temporary increase in federal transfers to local governments in Brazil. Revenues and expenditures of the communities benefiting from extra transfers temporarily increased by about 20% during the 4 year period from 1982 to the end of 1985. Schooling and literacy gains for directly exposed cohorts established in previous work that used the 1991 census are attenuated but persist in the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Children and adolescents of the next generation --born after the extra funding had disappeared-- show gains of about 0.08 standard deviation across the entire score distribution of two nationwide exams at the end of the 2000s. While we find no evidence of persistent improvements in school resources, we document discontinuities in education levels, literacy rates and incomes of test takers' parents that are consistent with intergenerational human capital spillovers.

The european higher education area at work: Lights and shadows defining continuous assessment

The aim of this paper is to analyse how learning assessment, particularly the Continuous Assessment system, has been defined in the Public Administration and Management Diploma Course of the University of Barcelona (Spain). This course was a pioneering experiment at this university in implementing the guidelines of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and thus represents a good case study for verifying whether one of the cornerstones of the EHEA has been accomplished with success. Using data obtained from the Teaching Plans elaborated by the lecturers of each subject, we are able to establish that the CA system has been progressively accepted to such an extent that it is now the assessment formula used by practically all of the lecturers, conforming in this way to the protocols laid down by the Faculty of Law in which this diploma course is taught. Nevertheless, we find that high dispersion exists in how Continuous Assessment is actually defined. Indeed, it seems that there is no unified view of how Continuous Assessment should be performed. This dispersion, however, seems to diminish over time and raises some questions about the advisability of agreement on criteria, considering the potential which CA has as a pedagogical tool. Moreover, we find that the Unique Assessment system, which students may also apply for, is an option chosen only by a minority, with lecturers usually defining it as merely a theoretical and/or practical test, of little innovation in relation to traditional tests.

The european higher education area at work: Lights and shadows defining continuous assessment

The aim of this paper is to analyse how learning assessment, particularly the Continuous Assessment system, has been defined in the Public Administration and Management Diploma Course of the University of Barcelona (Spain). This course was a pioneering experiment at this university in implementing the guidelines of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and thus represents a good case study for verifying whether one of the cornerstones of the EHEA has been accomplished with success. Using data obtained from the Teaching Plans elaborated by the lecturers of each subject, we are able to establish that the CA system has been progressively accepted to such an extent that it is now the assessment formula used by practically all of the lecturers, conforming in this way to the protocols laid down by the Faculty of Law in which this diploma course is taught. Nevertheless, we find that high dispersion exists in how Continuous Assessment is actually defined. Indeed, it seems that there is no unified view of how Continuous Assessment should be performed. This dispersion, however, seems to diminish over time and raises some questions about the advisability of agreement on criteria, considering the potential which CA has as a pedagogical tool. Moreover, we find that the Unique Assessment system, which students may also apply for, is an option chosen only by a minority, with lecturers usually defining it as merely a theoretical and/or practical test, of little innovation in relation to traditional tests.

The european higher education area at work: Lights and shadows defining continuous assessment

The aim of this paper is to analyse how learning assessment, particularly the Continuous Assessment system, has been defined in the Public Administration and Management Diploma Course of the University of Barcelona (Spain). This course was a pioneering experiment at this university in implementing the guidelines of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and thus represents a good case study for verifying whether one of the cornerstones of the EHEA has been accomplished with success. Using data obtained from the Teaching Plans elaborated by the lecturers of each subject, we are able to establish that the CA system has been progressively accepted to such an extent that it is now the assessment formula used by practically all of the lecturers, conforming in this way to the protocols laid down by the Faculty of Law in which this diploma course is taught. Nevertheless, we find that high dispersion exists in how Continuous Assessment is actually defined. Indeed, it seems that there is no unified view of how Continuous Assessment should be performed. This dispersion, however, seems to diminish over time and raises some questions about the advisability of agreement on criteria, considering the potential which CA has as a pedagogical tool. Moreover, we find that the Unique Assessment system, which students may also apply for, is an option chosen only by a minority, with lecturers usually defining it as merely a theoretical and/or practical test, of little innovation in relation to traditional tests.

Job accessibility, employment and job-education mismatch in the metropolitan area of Barcelona

This paper analyses the effect of job accessibility by public and private transport on labour market outcomes in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. Beyond employment, we consider the effect of job accessibility on job-education mismatch, which represents a relevant aspect of job quality. We adopt a recursive system of equations that models car availability, employment and mismatch. Public transport accessibility appears as an exogenous variable in the three equations. Even though it may reflect endogenous residential sorting, falsification proofs suggest that the estimated effect of public transport accessibility is not entirely driven by the endogenous nature of residential decisions.

Ethnic identity construction in Chiapas: examining the role of higher intercultural education model = La construcción de la identidad étnica en Chiapas : examinando el rol de un modelo de educación superior intercultural

This study explored ethnic identity among 410 mestizo students who were attending one of three universities, which varied in their ethnic composition and their educative model. One of these universities was private and had mostly mestizo students such as the public one did. The third educative context, also public, had an intercultural model of education and the students were mixed among mestizo and indigenous. The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) was administered to high school students in order to compare their scores on ethnic identity and its components: affi rmation, belonging or commitment and exploration. Principle components factor analysis with varimax rotation and tests of mean group differences are performed. The results showed signifi cant differences between the studied groups. Scores on ethnic identity and its components were signifi cantly higher among mestizos group from University with intercultural model of education than mestizos from public and private universities of the same region. Implications of these fi ndings for education are considered, as they are the strengths as well as the limitations of this research

A systematic review of Twitter’s hashtags in public health: an example of a globally adopted standard

The objective is to find evidence and make recommendations on the use of Twitter in public health,particularly through the study of hashtags(#). This systematic review shows the use of Twitter in different areas of public health: epidemiological surveillance, health promotion, health protection and disease prevention. Articles on this subject published in indexed journals with impact factor show the importance of conversations to engage the attention of Twitter users by using citations (@ user) and retweets(RT); however, not much importance seems to be given to the use of hashtags(#), which are often assimilated to the concept of keywords. Although tracking recurring hashtagsshould be less expensive than computing Twitter content, the potential of hashtaggeddata has not been properly exploited or recognized over the past years, probably due to the lack of efficient tools.