Flexibilidad curricular : mayor equidad en el acceso y permanencia en la educación superior

El propósito del presente trabajo es analizar el proceso de construcción de los Programas de Estímulos al Desempeño del Personal Académico (PEDPA), con el fin de ilustrar algunos problemas metodológicos básicos del sistema de evaluación asociado y sus repercusiones en las puntuaciones y estímulos económicos del personal evaluado. Se toma el caso de una universidad pública mexicana, describiendo el contexto institucional, las distintas etapas para elaborar el sistema evaluativo y los resultados obtenidos. Se concluye que los PEDPA adolecen de problemas metodológicos debido a la poca congruencia del modelo evaluativo con los propósitos declarados, la ausencia de los grupos colegiados en la construcción del modelo y la falta de participación de especialistas en evaluación.

Equilibrium Principle in Colombian Public Contracting

Public contracting in Colombia is conflicting and inefficient. It frequently leads to damage to State property. The Colombian legal system cannot assure efficient and transparent public contracting. The cause is the institutional environment characterized by high transaction costs. Colombian law worsens the process by recognizing the principle of economic equilibrium in public contracts. This principle increasese contract incompleteness and renders impossible the use of economic incentives to control the opportunism of the economic agents. The authors present the hypothesis that the economic equilibrium principle increases the conflictive nature of public contracting. They test the hypothesis empirically. The first section of the paper presents a summary of the literature on transaction costs economics, as well as the legal literature on the historical origin and the content of the economic equilibrium principle. The second section describes the methodology of the empirical study. The third section shows the empirical evidence of the effects that the economic equilibrium principle exerts over the public contracting. The last section presents the conclusions.

On the design of education conditional cash transfer programs and non education outcomes: the case of teenage pregnancy

We investigate the effect of education Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) on teenage pregnancy. Our main concern is with how the size and sign of the effect may depend on the design of the program. Using a simple model we show that an education CCT that conditions renewal on school performance reduces teenage pregnancy; the program can increase teenage pregnancy if it does not condition on school performance. Then, using an original data base, we estimate the causal impact on teenage pregnancy of two education CCTs implemented in Bogot´a (Subsidio Educativo, SE, and Familias en Acci´on, FA); both programs differ particularly on whether school success is a condition for renewal or not. We show that SE has negative average effect on teenage pregnancy while FA has a null average effect. We also find that SE has either null or no effect for adolescents in all age and grade groups while FA has positive, null or negative effects for adolescents in different age and grade groups. Since SE conditions renewal on school success and FA does not, we can argue that the empirical results are consistent with the predictions of our model and that conditioning renewal of the subsidy on school success crucially determines the effect of the subsidy on teenage pregnancy