Jean-Luc Demeulemeester

Rational choice under unequal constraints: the example of Belgian higher education

Abstract The virtues of laisser faire in the sphere of educational choices appear these days more and more doubtful when one looks at the apparently irrational students preferences for fields in low demand on the job market. In this paper, we try to give empirical content to the thesis advanced by Mingat and Eicher (Mingat, A., Eicher, J.C., 1982. Higher education and employment markets in France, Higher Education 11, 211–220), who suggest that students do not only take expected economic returns into account when choosing a discipline, but also their mere chances of academic success. If one assumes that more remunerative orientations are also riskier, and that poorer students give a heavier weight to the risk-component than richer ones, then one can reconcily economic rationality with labour market mismatches. Using a three-step methodology based on Lees work (Lee, L.F., 1983. Generalized econometric models with selectivity. Econometrica 51, 507–512), this is precisely what we find. We show that this result has important policy implications, as tending at equalizing opportunities will make poorer students less sensible to the risk component and more concerned with market needs.

A new International Database on Education Quality: 1965-2010

The aim of this article is to propose a new database allowing a comparative evaluation of the relative performance of schooling systems around the world. We measure this performance through pupils’ achievement in standardized tests. We merge all existing regional and international student achievement tests by using a specific methodology. When compared with other existing databases, our approach innovates in several ways, especially by including regional student achievement tests and intertemporal comparable indicators. We provide a data set of indicators of quality of student achievement for 103 countries/areas in primary education and 111 countries/areas in secondary education between 1965 and 2010.

Impact of individual characteristics and sociocultural environment on academic success

This article aims at ascertaining the factors of academic success and failure of 1,980 freshmen enrolled for the first time at the University of Brussels in 1987, by means of an ordered probit methodology. The results confirm the impact of variables characterizing social as well as cultural capital of the students. They highlight the significant impact of schooling record prior to attending a university and suggest the importance of variables such as sex and nationality. The results illustrate the respective roles of mothers in transmitting verbal skills and of siblings in conveying inside information on university life. Finally, they stress the essential role played by ability, which is proxied by a filtered measure of high school results.

The growth of aggregate wage earnings in Germany, 1810–1989

Aggregate wage earnings are one of the key variables of the German economy. Paradoxically, it is also a little known variable, especially in the long term. Historians have never devoted a synthesis to the subject and, among all the economists who have centred their work on the study of economic growth, Hoffmann (1965) is the only one to have addressed aggregate earnings over a long period. This article follows up his founding work and has two objectives. The first is to measure the movement of wages and wage earners over a long period and use this to make an original estimate of aggregate employment earnings in Germany from 1810 to 1989. Reconstituted sets of statistics are also used to put forward new hypotheses concerning the way is which wages, wage earners and aggregate employment earnings in Germany are linked to the socioeconomic development of the country in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is also sought to detect the temporary and permanent shocks that have affected the German economy since the beginning of the 19th century. Our reflection is in two parts. The first defines the concept of wages, sets out the spatial scope and describes the methodological constraints. The second describes our cliometric results.

Long-run aggregate rationality: Some tests on the Belgian stock markets

This article aims at highlighting the relevance of the Efficient Market Hypothesis versus rational bubbles hypotheses in order to account for the Belgian financial history since 1837. We use unit roots and cointegration techniques (following the works of Diba and Grossman [1988] and Dwyer and Hafer [1990]) and apply them to long-run time series of real stock prices and dividends. Our results tend to reject any hypothesis of rational bubbles but show great evidence of cointegration between stock prices and dividends for the 19th century sample (1837–1900, yearly). There is no evidence of cointegration for the intermediate sample (1958–88, quarterly). As the absence of rational bubbles and the validity of the Efficient Market Hypothesis should imply cointegration, we conclude that the time-invariance of the theory is questionable.