Meghan Millea

Disentangling the wage-productivity relationship: Evidence from select OECD member countries

Conventional theory proposes that firms reward productivity improvements with higher wages. Conversely, efficiency wage theory suggests that wages can induce greater productivity. This paper applies a statistical technique that disentangles the potential bidirectional feedback between wages and productivity. Wage strategies in six industrialized countries with various labor market institutions are examined. Conventional and efficiency wage practices vary systematically across the industrialized countries; these variations are consistent with the expected effects of labor market institutions.

Economic Education in Post-Soviet Russia: The Effectiveness of the Training of Trainers Program

The authors examined the Council for Economic Educations Training of Trainers programs effectiveness in post-Soviet Russia by evaluating teacher and student learning. The authors employed a randomization of teachers across treatment and control groups at two separate stages of the research design and found that participation in the workshop delivered by native Russian trainers improved teachers’ Test of Economic Literacy scores by approximately 10 percent, when they held all else constant. The authors also found that student learning was greater for students who were taught by teachers trained by program graduates, ceteris paribus. When the workshops impacts were further examined, the authors found that pedagogy and materials had a statistically significant impact of substantive magnitude on student learning. This result indicates that additional research is needed to determine the cost-effectiveness of teacher training versus curriculum distribution.

Estimating tuition elasticities of resident and non-resident enrolments at south-eastern public universities

ABSTRACT Due to increased reliance on tuition revenue, universities must be cognizant of the impacts tuition changes have on enrolment. In economics, the law of demand indicates that price increases (tuition) cause quantity demanded (enrolments) to decrease. The impacts of tuition increases on revenue depend on the magnitude of these two changes. The contribution of this article is the methodology used to control for competitor pricing in enrolment elasticity models. For resident enrolment, we included other in-state, 4-year public universities. For non-resident enrolment, we used weighting schemes based on enrolment patterns by school and by state to incorporate competitors’ tuition rates and relevant economic and demographic information. We applied these methodologies to universities in the south-eastern U.S. from 2003 to 2010. We found that tuition elasticities of both resident and non-resident enrolments at 4-year public universities varied from inelastic resident enrolments to elastic non-resident enrolments at the state level. In some cases, competitor pricing significantly impacted enrolments; in other cases, it did not. Across the full sample, 1% increase in resident tuition rates decreased enrolments by 0.3%. The techniques developed in this article can be used by individual universities or university systems to inform their strategies in setting tuition rates.

Developing Human Capital in Kazakhstan: An Evaluation of Economic Understanding and Attitudes Toward Market Economics

Economic development experts have recognized the need for the spread of economic literacy in the transition economies of the former Soviet Union. This article presents an analysis of a program designed to enhance economic literacy through teacher training in Kazakhstan. The cognitive and affective outcomes for high school students who were taught by teachers trained through the National Council on Economic Educations (NCEE) International Economic Education Exchange Program (IEEEP) were examined and compared to students in courses taught by a sample of teachers who had not received training. A two equation model was estimated which allowed for the interdependency of economic understanding and attitudes. The results indicate that students taught by trained teachers achieved higher post-course scores on standardized testing instruments, after controlling for differences in student attributes, teacher attributes, and course characteristics. This and other findings suggest that IEEEP training and the distribution of NCEE-developed curriculum materials in Kazakhstan was successful.