Regulating market entry of low-cost private schools in Sub-Saharan Africa: Towards a theory of private education regulation This study provides a comparative assessment of policies governing private schools in twenty countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Findings suggest that current regulatory systems are failing to adequately address the negative externalities and failures of private schooling markets. Insufficient capacity on the part of governments is a contributor to uneven policy implementation and creates opportunities for rent-seeking and corruption. Onerous market entry regulations offer constraints on the growth of official private education markets, but facilitate growth in unofficial markets if demand for education is not being fully met by the supply of government service provision, restricting the government’s ability to provide adequate oversight of private providers…
Diploma as signal? Estimating sheepskin effects in the Philippines The screening theory of education argues that education does not necessarily enhance worker’s productivity, but serves only as a signal of worker’s pre-existing ability. Empirical studies found that the mere possession of a diploma increases wages disproportionately than without it, or the so-called sheepskin effects. Using a sample of urban non-agricultural wage workers in the Philippines, this paper finds substantial sheepskin effects for holding a tertiary diploma, even after controlling for individual heterogeneity. While returns to tertiary education are lower in the competitive (private) sector, there is evidence of diverging age-earnings profiles between tertiary and secondary graduates, indicating a productive value higher education…
Improving China’s Rural Education, One Headmaster at a Time They say it takes a village to raise a child, and the Jack Ma Foundation is putting that saying into action every day through its Rural Headmaster Initiative. In July 2016, the foundation pledged to donate RMB 200 million ($30 million) in the next 10 years to help train principals and educational leaders in remote villages and towns…
More on robots…
Robots won’t destroy all the jobs because someone has to service the robots Each new robot in the workplace can replace roughly six human workers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. So anyone looking to avoid career disruption should look to jobs related to building, programming, deploying and maintaining robotic devices, according to software company Autodesk’s CEO.
National Bureau of Economic Research Economics of Artificial Intelligence:
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Innovation Artificial intelligence promises to improve existing goods and services, and, by enabling automation of many tasks, to greatly increase the efficiency with which they are produced. But it may have an even larger impact on the economy by serving as a new general-purpose “new method of invention” that can reshape the nature of …
Artificial Intelligence and the Modern Productivity Paradox: A Clash of Expectations and Statistics We live in an age of paradox. Systems using artificial intelligence match or surpass human level performance in more and more domains, leveraging rapid advances in other technologies and driving soaring stock prices. Yet measured productivity growth has fallen in…
Prediction, Judgment and Complexity
Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth Aghion, Jones, and Jones consider potential effects of artificial intelligence (A.I.) on economic growth. They start by modeling A.I. as a process where capital replaces labor at an increasing range of tasks and consider this perspective…
Historical Context and the Long Run
Machine Learning, Market Structure and Competition
Artificial Intelligence, Worker-Replacing Technological Change, and Income Distribution
Robocalypse Now: Does Productivity Growth Threaten Employment? Is productivity growth inimical to employment? Canonical economic theory says no, but much recent economic theory says ‘maybe’ — that is, rapid advances in machine capabilities may curtail aggregate labor demand as technology increasingly encroaches on human job tasks, ultimately immiserating…
Education failings: Is anyone listening? It is disheartening each time an international report is released which further condemns Thailand’s education system. The utter lack of progress in significantly improving the country’s schools demands…
Educational Upgrading and Returns to Skills in Latin America: Evidence from A Supply-Demand Framework This paper documents the evolution of wage differentials and the supply of workers by educational level for sixteen Latin American countries over the period 1991-2013. We find a pattern of rather constant rise in the relative supply of skilled and semi-skilled workers…
Schooling and household welfare: The case of Sri Lanka from 1990 to 2006 This paper looks at the effect schooling has had on household welfare in Sri Lanka during the 1990–2006 period, on average and across the welfare distribution. We account for the endogeneity of schooling using quantile instrumental variable estimation…
A round-the-world quest to discover the secret of learning Educationalist Alex Beard travelled through 20 countries, for two years, in search of the most promising approaches…
Education, economics and public policy 