The Limits of Inference without Theory

Historians have long warned of the perils of accepting various classifications in social statistics as delivering up unproblematic facts. They have examined how census classifications such as “household” and “race” have been subject to ideological manipulation, or have been developed in an environment of bureaucratic infighting or indecision. Many others – philosophers, literary historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, accountants, and economists – have also examined the contingent nature of various categories of social statistics as measures of difference.2 This essay offers additional thoughts on how economists might explore questions, epistemological and otherwise, about the “facts” of “difference” in social statistics. By “difference” I mean the outcome of the banal exercise of discrimination that distinguishes an object as something and not something else in social statistics, an exercise vital to those who do theoretical and empirical work in economics. I also mean the perspective that holds social categories as “being revealed by statistics” (Desrosieres 1998: 238), which highlights the meanings, moral and aesthetic, one imparts to difference. This essay is about classification, but it is also about facts and interpretations. Taxonomies supply stories about facts. Different groups – social scientists, politicians, bureaucrats, and the public – have struggled to define and value the facts and categories of social life, and their struggles entail social and political consequences.

Comments [Return to Article] Jens Ludwig: There is widespread belief that a person's neighborhood of residence affects labor market outcomes, particularly for low-skilled minority workers living in central cities. This view stems from the results reported in a large body of theoretical and empirical research from across the social sciences. Yet the conclusion that neighborhoods matter for labor market outcomes seems to stand in sharp contrast to research on the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized mobility experiment, which shows little impact on work or earnings measured four to seven years after random assignment.1 I consider ways of reconciling these conflicting strands of research as well as the implications for public policies designed to improve the labor market prospects of disadvantaged workers. I focus on three of the leading explanations that have been offered to explain why findings from MTO conflict with most people's reading of the existing literature on neighborhood effects: 1) the possibility that MTO did not generate large enough differences in neighborhood environments to affect outcomes; 2) whether estimates of neighborhood effects on the MTO population, which consists of the subset of public housing families who volunteered for the demonstration, generalize to other groups; and 3) the possibility that the effects of mobility on labor market outcomes become more pronounced over time. This paper by Turney and her colleagues provides useful information on these candidate explanations in the form of detailed, qualitative accounts of MTO families' experiences in the Baltimore demonstration site. After discussing previous hypotheses to reconcile MTO with existing research in light of findings from this work and other studies, I consider the evidence on another explanation that seems to have received less discussion—the possibility of bias with the previous nonexperimental research. [End Page 173] Did MTO Change Neighborhoods Enough? It is natural to wonder whether MTO actually changed neighborhoods enough to plausibly affect labor market or other outcomes. After all, of those families assigned to the MTO experimental group, only a fraction moved through the MTO program (58 percent in the Baltimore demonstration site). Experimental-group families were only required to live in their new low-poverty neighborhoods for one year, at which point they were free to use their vouchers to relocate to higher-poverty areas, which many chose to do. In addition, some control-group families wound up moving to neighborhoods with lower poverty rates over time on their own or as a result of HUD demolitions of public housing projects. Nevertheless, there are at least three reasons to believe that MTO generated important changes in the neighborhood environments of program participants, and therefore has something useful to say about the neighborhoods' role on labor market outcomes. First, across all five MTO cities, assignment to the experimental (rather than control) group reduced poverty rates by about 15 percent of the control group average in the tracts in which families were living four to seven years after random assignment (see table 1). In the Baltimore MTO site the experimental-control difference is more like 20 percent of the control mean for tract poverty, almost as large (17 percent) for tract employment rates, and more than twice as large (42 percent) as a share of the control mean for the presence of affluent (college-educated) adults in the neighborhood. These across-group differences pool together the experiences of families in the experimental group who did and did not move through MTO. The impact on those families who actually moved through the experimental MTO treatment in Baltimore will be about 1.7 times as large as the overall across-group differences.2 The one exception to this general pattern of MTO-induced changes in neighborhood attributes is for racial integration, which was more modestly affected by the MTO experimental treatment. A second reason to believe that MTO generated important changes in neighborhood environments is that MTO participants themselves perceive important differences in their neighborhood environments, as suggested by [End Page 174] the qualitative interviews described by this...

The article considers the transition from the empirical to the theoretical level of in-depth research of the term "economic behavior" of individuals. It is determined that the political and economic direction of research will provide a detailed objective definition of the internal economic reasons for the choice of an individual behavioral model.It isshown that economic behavior is a "reflection", an external form of economic activity of society, individual entities and their groups. The economic behavior of individuals is studied mainly from the standpoint of the empirical level of scientific knowledge. In this sense, the term reflects the real economic activity in which the subjects operate, from the outside, as a form of manifestation of their economic activity. It is the political and economic direction of research in economic theory that clarifies not only the external factors of influence or internal physiological reasons for an individual's actions, but also the internal objective grounds for forming a certain behavioral model that realizes primarily economic interests and sub status. in production and economic activities, in the process of reproduction of production, distribution, exchange, or market, consumer relations of society. Within the political and economic direction of research, structural and process-reproductive approaches are used in this way, which significantly enriches the theoretical and empirical research of the term "economic behavior". Thus, we must conclude that there is a need for in-depth analysis of behavior patterns not only of individuals but also of other economic actors, gradually moving from the empirical to the theoretical level of research, and linking behavioral patterns with changes in economic activity, and finally , with transformations of property relations and socialstatuses ofsubjects, instead of with any secondary and tertiary, etc. factors.It is determined that the deep basis of changes in models of economic behavior of individuals are changes in their economic activities, property relations, social status of the subjects of a particular society. The consequences of the application of psychophysical, behavioral, economic-sociological, economic-institutional, economic-legal directions of research, which clarify the influence of non-economic (mental, subjective-psychological, mental, legal, etc.)factors on the choice of models of human economic behavior, are described.

Spain has one of the highest rates of unemployment among OECD countries. Some explanations for this stress the importance of unemployment duration compared with entry rates to the unemployment pool. Long‐term unemployment rates are particularly high among women in Spain. The object of this paper is to investigate the determinants of unemployment duration among women. It will consider personal characteristics (education and age), family background, socio‐economic variables (the number of household earners and household income) and the effect of unemployment benefits, using data from the Household Expenditure Survey 1990–91.

Benefit programmes protect individuals against loss of income and provide unemployed individuals the possibility of finding a better match between their qualifications and job vacancies. This positive aspect of inducing workers to achieve better job matches has been shown to increase economic efficiency (Acemoglu & Shimer, 1999; Marimon & Zilibotti, 1999). However, unemployment benefits may also distort incentives by subsidizing long and unproductive job searches. In fact, the generosity of unemployment benefits is generally considered the main factor by which benefit systems affect unemployment. From a societal point of view, therefore, the optimal unemployment benefit system will balance considerations for protection with those for distortion (Feldstein, 2005; Mortensen, 1987). Theory suggests that putting a limit on benefit duration will tend to accelerate job search from the beginning of the unemployment spell and thereby shorten unemployment duration (Pissarides, 2000). Thus, generosity of benefits is determined not only by the amount paid but also by the duration of benefit entitlement. In the US, replacement rates1 are low and duration is short compared to benefit systems in most European countries. In 2005 the maximum duration of unemployment insurance entitlement among OECD countries 2 was shortest in the US at 6 months 3 and longest in Denmark, Norway, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Finland and Spain, varying between 23 and 48 months (OECD, 2007). At the same time, the gross initial replacement rate was around 50% in the US, while varying between 62% and 90% in the aforementioned European countries. The lower level of generosity of benefits in the US compared to Europe is consistent with the observation of higher levels of active searches and a greater willingness to accept inferior jobs by unemployed workers in the US compared to Europe (Layard, Nickell & Jackman, 2005). As a consequence European policy-makers may be tempted to reduce the generosity of unemployment systems in order to reduce high unemployment levels4. While lowering the replacement rate may be politically intractable (indeed, examples of reductions of benefit rates and amounts are rare), the length of the unemployment benefit entitlement period is often used as a political instrument to improve work incentives for the unemployed. In Spain, for example, the benefit period was altered in 1992, in Slovenia in 1998, in Norway in 1997, in the UK in 1996, in Denmark in 1996, 1998 and 1999, and, more recently, in the Czech Republic in 2004, in Hungary and Portugal in 2006, and in Denmark again in 2010. The important public policy question is whether a more generous unemployment benefit system is causally related to higher unemployment rates. As pointed out in Card and Riddell (1993), there can be several complementary explanations for high unemployment rates, including differences in the fraction of nonworking time that is reported as unemployment (particularly among individuals with very low levels of labour supply), and differences in the overall distributions of working and nonworking time. Recent research on the effect of extended duration of unemployment insurance benefits in the US shows that benefit extensions raised the unemployment rate, but at least half of the effect is attributable to reduced labour force exit among the unemployed rather than to the changes in reemployment rates that are of greater policy concern (Rothstein, 2011). This review will focus on the effect on job finding rates of reducing the maximum duration of entitlement of unemployment benefits, and secondarily on the effects on the quality of these jobs. The intervention of interest is reduction in the maximum duration of entitlement of any kind of unemployment benefit with a known expiration date. The benefits may be unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, or they may be unemployment assistance (UA)/social assistance (SA) benefits as long as they have a known expiration date. In the majority of OECD countries, the UI benefit has a time-limit. In fact, only Belgium has an unlimited UI period. In other countries, the maximum duration varies between 6 months (as for example in the UK and the US) and 36 months (in Iceland). In most OECD countries, a secondary benefit is available for those who have exhausted regular UI benefits. This is known as SA benefits. Unlike UI benefits, SA benefits are generally means-tested without any necessary connection to past employment; they pay a lower level of benefit and are indefinite. We know of only one example of a SA benefit with a time limit: the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) which is available in the US. The federal government requires states to impose between 2- or 5-year limits on TANF (Gustafson & Levine, 1997). In a minority of OECD countries, UA benefits are paid after exhaustion of UI benefits. Like SA benefits, they are generally means-tested, pay a lower level of benefits and, excepting Hungary, Portugal and Sweden, are indefinite. Unemployment benefits with an indefinite time limit or non-financial benefits will be excluded from this review. Search theory offers an explanation for how this intervention might work. According to search theory, one can derive a relationship between the job-finding rate and the parameters of the benefit system, in particular the maximum benefit duration and the replacement rate (Mortensen, 1977). This relationship is driven by adjustments in search effort and reservation wages. The reservation wage is the minimum wage at which the unemployed are willing to accept a job. Forward-looking unemployed workers chose their current search effort and reservation wage in order to maximize the sum of the utility flow realized during the current period, plus the expected discounted future utility flow given that an optimal strategy will be pursued in every future period. The current search effort and reservation wage are thus affected by the future level of benefits. When the benefit period expires, the unemployed person experiences a potentially large drop in income. As the time of benefit exhaustion approaches, the value to that person of remaining unemployed falls, implying a higher search effort and/or a fall in the reservation wage, leading to a higher exit rate out of unemployment (Mortensen, 1977). This non-stationarity implies that unemployed individuals with different lengths of benefit entitlement have different optimal paths of reservation wage and search effort over time (van den Berg 1990). A shorter entitlement period gives the unemployed individual a stronger incentive to quickly gain employment in order to avoid the drop in income after the exhaustion date. How strong the incentive is depends on the magnitude of the income drop. If no secondary benefit is available for those who have exhausted their current benefit, the incentive to gain employment will be stronger. If an increased job finding rate is mainly driven by lowering the reservation wage, a lower job match quality is to be expected, for example, in the form of lower wages and/or lower re-employment duration. A number of factors may have an impact on the magnitude of the expected increase in the job finding rate. In general, the overall labour market conditions (i.e. the vacancy rate5 and, in particular, the unemployment rate) have an impact on the availability of and competition for jobs. If the vacancy rate is high (i.e. the number of vacancies is high in relation to job seekers) we would expect a bigger effect on job finding rates than if the vacancy rate is low. We would further expect a lower effect if the unemployment rate is high, regardless of the vacancy rate. If the vacancy rate is low coincident with a high unemployment rate, competition for available jobs is likely to be high. If the vacancy rate is high coincident with a high unemployment rate, it suggests mismatch in the labour market (i.e., the process by which vacant jobs and job seekers meet is not efficient) (Filges & Larsen, 2000; Pissarides, 2000). Whether compulsory participation in active labour market programmes is part of the unemployment system may also have an impact on the effect of maximum duration of entitlement. The compulsory aspect of activation may provide an incentive for unemployed individuals to look for and return to work prior to programme participation; the so called threat effect. Filges and Hansen (2015) summarize the available evidence on the threat effect of active labour market programmes and report a significant threat effect of compulsory participation in active labour market programmes. Further, actual participation in active labour market programmes may improve some of the participants' qualifications, thus helping them to find a job. Alternatively, active labour market programmes may have negative stigmatization and signalling effects to employers. Programmes associated with participants having poor employment prospect may carry a stigma. Because of asymmetric information, employers do not know the productivity of new workers, some of whom they might hire from the pool of the unemployed. Prospective employers might then perceive participants in such programmes as low productivity workers or workers with tenuous labour market attachment (Kluve et al. 1999; Kluve et al., 2007). A recent systematic review by Filges et al. (2015) investigated the effect of participating in active labour market programmes and found that there is a significant positive effect, although small, of participating in active labour market programmes. The effect reported in Filges et al. (2015) is however a pure post-programme effect of active labour market programmes; it refers to the period after participation in a programme. The net effect of active labour market programme participation on job-finding rates is, however, composed of two separate effects: a lock-in effect and a post-programme effect. The lock-in effect refers to the period of participation in a programme. During this period, job-search intensity may be lowered because there is less time to search for a job, and participants may want to complete an on-going skill-enhancing activity; hence the lock-in effect. The combination of the two effects, lock-in and post-programme, consequently determines the net effects of active labour market programme participation on unemployment duration. These additional effects on the search behaviour and employment prospects when compulsory participation in active labour market programmes is part of the unemployment system may dampen the observed effects of maximum duration of entitlement on job finding rates. Finally, the type of unemployment benefit may have an impact on the effect on the job finding rate. As mentioned above, some countries employ two systems to provide benefits to unemployed individuals: an unemployment insurance system for individuals who typically have a strong labour market attachment (UI benefits) and a social welfare system for individuals who often have other problems in addition to unemployment (SA or UA benefits). The effect size in social welfare systems offering unemployment benefits with a known expiration date is, due to the participants' lower labour market attachment, expected to be less than the effect size in unemployment insurance systems with a known expiration date. In order to reduce high unemployment levels, policy-makers may wish to reduce the generosity of the unemployment system either in amount (the replacement rate) or in maximum potential duration. The positive correlation between unemployment benefit generosity in terms of the replacement rate and unemployment duration is well established at the empirical level (Layard et al., 2005). However, it may be politically intractable to lower the replacement rate, and there are indeed strong efficiency and equity arguments for having a reasonable value of unemployment benefits (Acemoglu & Shimer, 1999; Marimon & Zilibotti, 1999). Search theory suggests that an increase in unemployment benefit generosity, in terms of maximum duration of benefit entitlement, has a negative impact on the job search activities of the unemployed increasing their unemployment duration. There is clear evidence that the prospect of exhaustion of benefits results in a significantly increased incentive for finding work, although the effect is small (Filges et al., 2013). Hence, shortening the benefit eligibility period may reduce the share of long and unproductive job searches somewhat. The conclusion in Filges et al. (2013) however leaves unanswered the question of by how much reducing the maximum unemployment benefit entitlement will decrease unemployment duration. There are many empirical papers on the effect of maximum benefit entitlement on unemployed individuals (Caliendo, Tatsiramos and Uhlendoff 2009; Bennmarker, Carling & Holmlund, 2007; Ham & Rea, 1987; Hunt, 1995; Katz & Meyer, 1990 and Lalive & Zweimüller, 2004), but the empirical research has not been summarized in a systematic review to obtain a clearer picture of the available evidence on the employment effect of reducing maximum duration of benefit entitlement. One paper provides a review of the literature on how incentives in unemployment insurance can be improved (Fredriksson and Holmlund 2006). However, it is not a systematic review and, furthermore, the authors do not make the important distinction between exits to employment and exits to other destinations such as such as other kinds of benefits or out of the labour force. Distinguishing between destinations is vital. As shown in Card, Chetty and Weber (2007), the exit rate from registered unemployment increases over 10 times more than the rate of re-employment at the expiration of benefits. The difference between the two measures arises because many individuals leave the unemployment register immediately after their benefits expire without returning to work. There is a great deal of political interest in optimizing the unemployment benefit system so it balances the protection and distortion dimensions. The political interest is to reduce the unemployment level, to prevent exploitation of the unemployment benefit system and at the same time protect the unemployed individuals from the consequences of involuntary unemployment. It is therefore of great importance to establish the effect of reducing maximum duration of unemployment benefit entitlement on employment probabilities. The purpose of this review is to systematically uncover relevant studies in the literature that measure the effects of shortening the maximum duration of unemployment benefit entitlement on job finding rates, and to synthesize the effects in a transparent manner. As a secondary objective we will, where possible, investigate the extent to which the effects differ among different groups of unemployed such as high/low educated or men/women, and further explore from which point in the unemployment spell do unemployed individuals react to the length of benefit entitlement. The title for this systematic review was approved in The Campbell Collaboration on 9. October 2012. Study designs that use a well-defined control group are eligible. The main control or comparison condition is no change in maximum duration of benefit entitlement. Non-randomized studies, where the reduction in maximum duration of benefit entitlement has occurred in the course of usual decisions outside the researcher's control must demonstrate pre-treatment group equivalence via matching, statistical controls, or evidence of equivalence on key risk variables (e.g., labour market conditions) and participant characteristics. These factors are outlined in section ‘Assessment of risk of bias in included studies’ under the subheading of Confounding, and the methodological appropriateness of the included studies will be assessed according to the risk of bias model outlined in section ‘Assessment of risk of bias in included studies’. Studies of the effect of reducing unemployment benefit entitlement typically are estimated on data collected from administrative registers or by questionnaires. Studies that use different data sources for treatment and control groups will not be eligible. Only studies that use individual micro-data are eligible. Studies that rely on regional or national time series data are not eligible, even though micro-econometric estimates of individual effects merely provide partial information about the full impact of shortening the maximum duration of benefit entitlement (Calmfors, 1994; Calmfors, 1995). We will include studies irrespective of their publication status, and their electronic availability. We will include unemployed individuals who receive some sort of time limited benefit during their unemployment spell. The International Labour Office (ILO) definition of an unemployed individual is a person, male or female, aged 15-74, without a job who is available for work and either has searched for work in the past four weeks or is available to start work within two weeks and/or is waiting to start a job already obtained (ILO, 1990); however, different countries may apply different definitions of an unemployed individual, see for example Statistics Denmark (2009). We will include participants receiving all types of unemployment benefits with a known exhaustion date. The only restriction is that the benefits must be related to being unemployed. We will therefore exclude individuals who only receive other types of benefits not related to being unemployed. We will include all unemployed participants regardless of age, gender, etc. who receive some sort of time limited benefit during their unemployment spell. The intervention is reduction in the maximum duration of entitlement of any kind of unemployment benefits. The benefits may be unemployment insurance (UI) benefits or they may be unemployment assistance (UA)/social assistance (SA). The only requirement is that the benefit must have a known expiration date. The UI benefit usually has a known time-limit whereas UA and SA usually are indefinite. Unemployment benefits with an indefinite time limit or non-financial benefits will be excluded from this review. The objective is to determine whether reducing the maximum entitlement to unemployment benefits motivates unemployed individuals to find a job more quickly. Distinguishing between destinations is therefore vital. The primary outcome is exits to employment. Studies only looking at exits to other destinations such as other types of social benefits or non-employment and studies who do not distinguish between destinations are not eligible. We will consider secondary outcomes in terms of the impact that reducing the maximum duration of entitlement of benefit has on the duration of re-employment and on income. This will the done in order to obtain a clearer picture of the effect that reducing the maximum entitlement of unemployment benefit has on the quality of the job. If the duration of re-employment or the wage is low, this could indicate that reducing entitlement forces unemployed individuals to find jobs that do not match their qualifications and therefore they may return to unemployment quickly. Outcomes measured as hazard ratios may be reported as an overall effect on the hazard ratio, or may be reported separate for various unemployment duration intervals. All time points reported will be considered. All types of settings are eligible. Relevant studies will be identified through electronic searches of bibliographic databases, research networks, government policy databanks and internet search engines. No language or date restrictions are applied in the searches6. An example of the search strategy for Business Source Elite is listed in Appendix 1.4. The strategy will be modified for the different databases. We will report full details of the modifications in the completed review. Additional searches will be made by means of Google (including Google Scholar) and we will check the first 150 hits. OpenSIGLE will be used to search for European grey literature (http://opensigle.inist.fr/). Copies of relevant documents will be made and we will record the exact URL and date of access for each relevant document. Websites of the following private independent research institutes and economic networks will be searched: IZA -- Institute of the Study of Labor (www.iza.org) CEPR -- Centre for Economic Policy Research (www.cepr.org) NBER -- National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org) MDRC -- the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation -- (www.mdrc.org) CESifo -- the cooperation between CES (Center for Economic Studies) and IFO (Institute for Economic Research) -- (www.cesifo-group.de/portal/page/portal/ifoHome) are all covered via IDEAS. In addition we will look into the following sites: Danish Economic Councils (www.dors.dk) OECD - the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (www.oecd.org) IMF - The International Monetary Fund (www.imf.org) AIECE - Association of European Conjuncture Institutes (www.aiece.org) ESRC - Economic Social Research Council (www.esrc.ac.uk) Copenhagen Economics (www.copenhageneconomics.com) SSRN -- Social Science Research Network (www.ssrn.com) will also be searched to uncover potential preprint discussion papers. Unpublished theses and dissertations will be searched through the databases: Theses and dissertations and Theses Canada. Copies of relevant documents from Internet-based sources will be made. We will record the exact URL and date of of included studies and of relevant will be of Labor and will be searched for the and the available of of included studies and relevant will be searched for potential new with national and will be considered to and on-going We expect that a of the studies we will have been without of there is no for in labour market This among other from some of of participants due to about of The in these studies without of participants is the of the effect. studies use in benefit or changes of the maximum entitlement period. A policy is to the maximum benefit period when labour market conditions are expected to studies use this policy to the effect on unemployment duration & Rea, 1987; Hunt, and Katz & Meyer, 1990). It is however to rely on such a as these changes any other policy If the of the change are not for it will of the effect will be due to the labour market conditions that to the change in entitlement in the first A more recent & Zweimüller, extended benefit entitlement in and four different in order to the effect of extended benefit entitlement from the impact of labour The extended benefit entitlement was to the labour market problems in and for of The was therefore limited to job seekers aged or in for a limited time period (the after implying that there may be many workers who are to different for time and they different of where no are consider the policy of extended benefit entitlement as thereby to the when it can be that the individuals are not to during the observation period Lalive & Zweimüller, for further The same of apply to all changes to the maximum entitlement period. example the by and of the unemployment insurance system in The reduced the maximum duration of benefits, by half for most groups of the effect, they a strategy and the of employment and after the for those affected with the job finding for those who not avoid bias due to of the from employment to they only consider data for the period of 2 months and 2 months after the The authors further that it is a as the in potential benefit duration to the of the labour market and furthermore, potential benefit duration for different groups of unemployed. In Tatsiramos & the is on a The strategy on a in the maximum duration of unemployment benefits at the of in unemployed who are the with unemployed the gives a measure of the effect of maximum duration of benefits. is the in Lalive on a in the potential benefit duration at and in We will into the of of the studies to determine to whether individuals in groups (i.e. whether individuals may have whether there treatment groups and whether several studies are on the same data included in this review will be for in the of and the of as statistical can when they are When have been we will effect estimates and their & 2011). In where have not applied that control for effects, we will the correlation & and Studies with intervention groups with different individuals will be included in this review. avoid problems with between effect we will apply & However, studies that this around studies included in the data et al., If this number be we will use a effect size (the in order to avoid between effect This provides an of the effect size but the effects applied when effect are better in terms of than do effects 2007). However, of when effect are included are less often than If is not (e.g., the and/or control groups include the same only one intervention group will be and compared to the control group to avoid The of which to include will be on risk of bias We will the that we to have the least risk of bias bias and in of the data will be In some several studies may have used the same of data or some studies may have used only a of a used in We will review all such studies, but in the we will only include one of the effect from each of This will be done to avoid between the (i.e. the estimates of the in the The of which to include will be on risk of bias of the We will the from the that we to have the least risk of bias If two studies are to have the same risk of bias and one of the studies a of a used in or studies, we will include the the full of When the results are measured at time each outcome at each time point will be in a separate with other studies at a time As a these will be according to length of unemployment duration as to less than 6 6 months to more than However, the studies provide for an of relevant and duration for the of we will the the of review two review will first and to exclude studies that are Studies considered by at least one or studies there is in

Current estimates of the contribution of education to economic growth have been questioned because they ignore the interaction of education with ability. Whether the neglect of ability differences in the analyses of the income-education relationship results in estimates that are too high was considered in an earlier paper by one of the authors (Griliches 1970), and a negative answer was conjectured. In this paper, we pursue this question a bit further, using a new and larger body of data. Unfortunately, a definitive answer to this question is hampered both by the vagueness and elasticity of "education" and "ability" as analytical concepts and by the lack of data on early (preschooling) intelligence. The data examined in this paper are based on a 1964 sample of U.S. military veterans. The variables measured include scores on a mental ability test, indicators of parental status, region of residence while growing up, school years completed before service, and school years completed during or after service. These have allowed us to inquire into the separate effects of parental background, intelligence, and schooling. The basic problem and analytical framework can be set out very simply. Let income be a linear function of education and ability, or, Y a + P1E + P(2G + u, where Y is income, E is education, G is ability,

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the effects of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows on six labor market outcomes by using a panel data of the Mexican states from 2005 to 2015. By relying on the system Generalized Method of Moments estimator to address potential endogeneity of FDI in the labor market outcomes regressions, this study finds that the FDI inflows result in a reduction in the overall unemployment rate. Moreover, the FDI is associated with a decrease in the percentage of employed people with the need and availability to offer more working hours and an increase in the median hourly wage rate. The FDI is not likely to influence the critical employment, informal sector employment, and unemployment duration.

Public affairs scholars have been concerned about the quality of education in their field for some decades. To assess the program quality, the authors analyzed the National Research Council's most recent data. In the comparative analyses between the public affairs programs and the programs in other social science disciplines, they found that public affairs doctoral programs were behind their peer fields on most of the input-based metrics (students fully funded in their first year of education, median quantitative GRE scores, and percentage of international students in programs) but ahead of them in student-faculty ratios. The results of the outcome-based metrics were mixed. Public affairs students graduated earlier on average, but smaller percentages of them had plans for employment in academic positions. Also, the faculty productivity was lower in public affairs programs compared to the other social science disciplines. Among the subfields of public affairs, public management and public policy had more favorable input- and outcome-based results compared to public administration.

Prompted by increased concerns about the problems of education quality, this action research was conducted to study the role of the teachers in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) to improve the students Communicative English Skills at Ambo University. To achieve this objective, 198 (113 male and 85 female) first year (94) Pre-engineering and (104) Economics and Public Administration (FBE) undergraduate students of the University were purposively selected because the practitioner had been assigned to these particular students. The students were proportionally stratified into Experimental and Control groups based on the result of the pretest , field of study and sex. Both quantitative and qualitative data were obtained from the respondents through lesson observation, achievement test, questionnaire, focused group discussion, recorded classroom teaching observation and teaching material analyses. The obtained results were then triangulated. The study mainly focused on the role of the practitioner as a reflective teacher in selecting teaching materials and planning lessons, implementing it properly, conducting both reflection in- and reflection on- action activities, as the result of the reflections, planning and giving remedial actions to narrow the gaps between the students, and making the process cyclical. The overall result of the study showed that it is possible for the instructor to be a reflective practitioner in teaching the language to students of both natural and social sciences. The reflective teaching strategies adopted were found to have significantly improved the students results,’ leaning power and interest. In contrast to the control group, 70% of the students in the experimental group scored above 75% in the test. However, the low commitment of the students, the large class size and ill-designed teaching materials are some hindrances to implementing the reflective teaching strategies. Therefore, the solution to the problem lies in bringing about improvement on these hindrances.

Does the quality of public-sponsored training programs matter? Evidence from bidding processes data

As elsewhere in the Anglophone world, there has been a serious contraction in public funding for the teaching of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Australian universities during the 1990s. Although staff morale has suffered and class sizes have grown, the level of innovation in undergraduate teaching has risen and student assessments of how they are taught have improved. Certain disciplines in the Humanities have prospered during this decade; others have gone into seemingly irreversible decline. The Humanities will play a crucial role in Australia’s economic future, given the emergence of new knowledge-laden industries. The styles of teaching and learning in the BA will also foster some of the skills necessary for success in that as yet ill-defined economy.

Can they think for themselves? The coming generation of scientists must learn more in school than simple fact memorising.

Typically reliant on self-reports from panel data, a growing body of literature suggests that relative body weight can have negative effects on labour market outcomes. Given the interest in the effects of relative weight in the social sciences, this paper addresses the question of whether repeated interviewing affects the quality of these data. A theory that focuses on the sensitivity of the questions rather than the survey context is proposed. Examining experimental panel data from Understanding Society using quantile-regression, the findings for women are consistent with the argument that conditioning reduces social desirability effects. The ameliorative effects of panel conditioning on social desirability bias in self-reported height and bodyweight appear to strengthen the association between relative weight and employment for men, but not women, however.

Bereitets presentation of connectionism is put forward as an explanation of how computational tasks are performed by the brain in ways that are consistent with the alternative views of cognition as situated or embodied, as opposed to the more classical rule-based approaches. One perennial problem for theories of cognition has been how to account for the nature of representation. Clancey and Roschelle addressed this problem in a way that is extremely relevant to an appreciation of cognition as a situated social process, arguing that “cognitive science research has distorted the nature of representations, and hence at its heart distorted the nature of cognition”. Recognition that the most diverse elements can operate within a triadic sign also has implications for the kind of interdisciplinary work needed to account for cognition and other semiosic processes. The anthropologist Lévi-Strauss provided the most influential example of how Saussure’s structuralist approach could be generalized for diverse uses in the humanities and social sciences.

Earth science education: The current state of play