Steven E. Henson

The Effects of AACSB Accreditation on Faculty Salaries and Productivity.

The authors explored differences between salaries and productivity of business faculty in Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)-accredited business programs and those without AACSB accreditation. Empirical evidence is scarce regarding these differences, yet understanding the impact of AACSB accreditation on salaries and productivity is important when university administrators assess the costs and benefits of AACSB accreditation. The authors found that faculty in accredited business schools are paid more, publish more, and teach less than their peers at nonaccredited schools. These differences exist between faculty who are otherwise similar, and are not simply due to nonrandom selection of faculty into accredited and nonaccredited institutions.

The Distributional Effects of the Federal Energy Tax Act

This paper examines the distributional consequences of the tax credits implemented by the Federal Energy Tax Act of 1978. The distributional effects are of interest both for their own sake, and because they have implications for the cost-effectiveness of the credits. If rates of return to conservation are higher for individuals who consume less housing, as earlier evidence suggests, then conservation incentive programs can achieve larger benefits for a given cost if they are distributionally more progressive. We explain the amount of credit claimed by taxpayers using a tobit model, in which credits claimed are a function of variables that affect the net benefit of weatherization. We estimate the model using data from the 1979 Taxpayer Compliance Measurement Program conducted by the Internal Revenue Service. We find that credits claimed are significantly higher where winters are more severe, where energy prices are high or rising rapidly, and where individuals have higher incomes and spend more on housing. Progressivity indices based on Lorenz-Gini measures of inequality reveal that the tax credits were somewhat regressive, even holding climate and energy prices constant. This suggests that the credits may have been ineffectively targeted. In addition, we find no evidence that the credits had a measurable incentive effect, suggesting that they have largely provided windfall gains to households who would have insulated anyway.

Is There Really a Faculty Union Salary Premium

Studies of the effects of unions on collegiate faculty salaries are inconclusive. Some estimate a significant union premium, but such estimates suffer from endogeneity between unions and wages, non-random measurement error, and failure to adjust for local cost-of-living differences. By using data from the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF, 1988–2004) as well as other sources to identify institution-specific factors omitted from previous studies, the authors estimate significantly smaller union premia than those found by other researchers.

Administrative costs in higher education: how fast are they really growing?

It is widely believed that administrative expenditures in US higher education are growing too rapidly, particularly in relation to expenditures that are directly related to instruction, and that this so‐called ‘administrative bloat’ is a major factor in the rising cost of higher education. We argue that this perception of rapid growth is exaggerated, and that it results from focusing on simple expenditure aggregates that obscure important variation across institutions. A more careful analysis using panel‐data methods supports a more benign conclusion that administrative expenditures, and their ratio to instructional expenditures, are stationary over time. This conclusion is supported by panel unit‐root tests. This suggests that some of the concern about the role of administrative expenditures in rising higher‐education costs may be misdirected.

An Engineering/Econometric Analysis of Seasonal Energy Demand and Conservation in the Pacific Northwest

This article estimates a new model of residential electricity demand. It differs from previous work in two ways. First, we use individual monthly billing data in a pooled time-series/cross- section framework. Second, we use an engineering/thermal-load technique to model the household space-heating technology. We estimate the model using data from the Pacific Northwest and use the results to analyze three conservation measures: a price increase, a reduction in thermostat settings, and improvement of insulation levels. We find average rates of return for insulation upgrades of 4.9% for ceilings and 8.3% for walls.

Collective Bargaining and Faculty Job Satisfaction

Estimates of the impact of union membership on job satisfaction suffer from nonrandom self‐selection of employees into unions. In this paper, we circumvent this problem by examining the impact on satisfaction of collective bargaining representation, rather than of union membership. We use a two‐stage technique that controls for nonrandom selection of faculty into institutions, and apply that to a panel of faculty at repeatedly observed four‐year universities. We find that bargaining agreements increase satisfaction with compensation but reduce satisfaction with faculty workload. Bargaining has no statistically measurable impact on overall job satisfaction or on facultys satisfaction with their authority to make decisions regarding their instructional duties.

Weak Foundations in Economic Development Programs

The existing literature on the relationship between employment growth and firm characteristics (such as firm age, size, and sector) has been used to justify a variety of economic development policies and job creation programs. Some of the programs highlight the importance of small firms, others emphasize the importance of young firms, and others highlight the importance of older, more established firms. The fact that each of these programs can find something in the literature that supports its particular focus suggests problems in the connection between the literature and policy formation. The authors find that the empirical support for such programs is weak. The statistical significance of firm characteristics depends critically on the model specification and/or data set used. Moreover, these characteristics explain only a small fraction of the variation in job growth, leaving policy makers with relatively weak policy tools.

The Educational Impact of Online Learning: How Do University Students Perform in Subsequent Courses?

Using a large student-level dataset from a medium-sized regional comprehensive university, we measure the impact of taking an online prerequisite course on follow-up course grades. To control for self-selection into online courses, we utilize student, instructor, course, and time fixed effects augmented with an instrumental variable approach. We find that students’ grades in follow-up courses can be expected to be nearly one twelfth of a grade point lower if the prerequisite course was taken online. These results are robust to self-selection into online courses and into subsequent course enrollment.