Sustainable International Development (SID) Program

1

November 24, 2018

Brandeis University

Heller Graduate School

Sustainable International Development (SID) Program

Economics of education (HS 221f)

Syllabus (module I) – Spring 2018

Instructor:Ricardo Godoy

Office: Heller 153

Tel. 6-2784; E-mail:

Teaching assistant: Wei Jia (

Time and place: Tuesdays 2-4:50pm (except 2/20). G2

Office hours. By appointmentThursdays 12-6pm and Tuesdays 5-6pm

Broad goals: The course has to two broad goals, one substantive and one practical:

• Substantive:
• Specific goal #1: The benefits of schooling. Abundant international evidence suggests that human capital(a term that includes schooling and academic and cognitive skills) is a strong predictor of the economic growth of nations and indicators of individual well-being, such as monetary income and health. If so, then at leasttwo questions follow, which we try to address as part of the first specific goal of the course:
• What forms of human capital are most likely to improve individual well-being? In particular, we identify and compare the relative contribution of academic skills (e.g., math, literacy), cognitive skills, and behaviors acquired in school (e.g., cooperation) to individual well-being.
• What are the financial and the non-pecuniarybenefits of thesedifferent forms of human capital? Here we want to know by how much outcomes such as income or good health improve from, say, an additional year of school attainment.
• Specific goal #2: The determinants of school attainment. If different forms of human capital are associated with improved indicators of individual well-being, then several questions follow:
• What drives the accumulation of different forms of human capital?
• What is the economic rationale for girl-boy disparities in human capital investments within the household?
• Under what conditions do girl-boy disparities in human capital grow or wane over time?
• Practical:Students will select one of two sets of practical skills they want to pursue as they develop their final class projects. Students have the option of following one of two tracks, but not both since each track requires much work:

(i) Technical track: This track is for students who want to focus on the applied statistical techniques needed to do empirical work on the economics of education. This option is probably most appropriate for students with prior background in statistics. However, because some students might not have had background in statistics but want to use the course as an introduction, I will try to guide students through all the steps so that statistics and the use of Stata 15 [a common computer software in development] do not become insurmountable hurdles to learning but are viewed instead as friendly neighbors that can enrich one's understanding in the study of the economics of education. This set of skills matters because applied statistics has become the lingua franca in much of development.

(ii)Policy track. Students who chose this practical set of skills will learn how to define a policy problem, offer a policy solution backed by evidence, and develop an implementation strategy to put the policy in place. Students will learn how to evaluate the results of empirical research on the economics of education to come up with policy solutions backed by evidence. This track will not require the use of statistics and might be more apt for students who do not have background in statistics or who have a strong interest in policy.Make sure the final project speaksdirectly to your concerns.

Approach: Through the final project -- whether focused on statistical analysis or on policy -- students will learn how to apply the concepts and skills learned in class to real life situations in developing nations.

Structure of class time. The typical class (#2-6) will run as follow:

• 2-2:45pm quiz and review of the quiz [classes 2, 4, and 6]
• 2:45-3:45pm lecture
• 3:45-4:00pm break
• 4-4:50pmlecture and review of intermediate steps for final class project

The role of the Teaching Assistant

[a] To grade and promptly return the weekly quizzes

[b] Post the suggested solutions on the course web page (LATTE)

[c] Hold office hours to help students with Stata

If you have questions about the readings or lectures, or if you want comments about your intermediate or final group project see the instructor, not the TA.

Readings and notes. Readings will be in Latte. Some of the readings are technical. Focus on the big messages or intuition in the readings; don’t get sidetracked in the details. Notes from the Fall of 2016 are also in Latte, but these notes often lack the diagrams, which will be provided in class. Also, the 2018 notes will differ from the 2016 notes, so you can use the 2016 notes to get a head start if you wish, but it might be less confusing to wait for the 2018 notes.

Grade. The final grade will be based on the following:

[1]Weekly quizzes. (50%). At the start ofclasses 2, 4, and 6 there will be an in-class, closed-book quizzes You cannot use any written material, telephone, text messaging, or email during the quiz, and you cannot speak with anyone (besides the proctor). Quizzes from the fall of 2016 (the last time the course was offered) with and without suggested solutions have been posted in Latte.

You will be graded relative to all the students taking the course. To score the quizzes we will compute the score of each student, and rank the scores. Each quiz will be graded as follow: the students who have the top 16% of the scores will receive an A. The 16% next lowest scores will receive an A-, the next 16% lowest scores will receive a B+, the next 16% lowest scores will receive a B, the next 16% lowest scores will receive a B-, and the remaining students will receive a C+. The material covered in each quiz will be cumulative and will include all the lectures and readings up to the day of the quiz. For example, the second quiz on class #4 (February 6)will include the lectures, readings, and notes covered in classes 1-3 (January 16, 23, 30), but will also include the readings (but not the notes) from class #4. Since the quiz will take place at the start of the class, the quiz on February 6cannot cover the lecture notes of February 6, but will cover the readings for that class. You should expect questions and material from previous lectures and quizzes to re-appear in subsequent quizzes. When computing your final grade from quizzes for the course, we will drop the quiz with the lowest score. Do not worry if you miss a quiz because the quiz you miss will be the one we will drop when computing your final grade. Do not ask for a make-up quiz.

Procedures to request re-scoring of question(s) in a quiz. If, after you received your graded quiz, you feel that one or more questions have been incorrectly scored, you must do the following within one week of receiving the quiz:

[a] Provide a written explanation of why you think the question(s) was scored incorrectly.

[b] Stapled the explanation to the quiz and give it to me (or the TA if the course has one) so I/we can review it.

[2] Final paper and presentation. (Total 50%). For the final project students will work in groups of four. The final paper will be doubled-spaced with 12-inch font and 1-inch margins on all sides. The maximum length of the paper will vary depending on the track chosen (technical, policy). Before the last class I will hand out guidelines and specific instructions about the final paper and presentation. On the last day of class (March 6) you will have to turn in a paper containing the following, depending on the track selected:

[a] Final paper for students opting for the policy track: This should be a 10-page(maximum) paper, divided into the following sections: (1) the problem you will address (e.g., girls in country X receive, on average, two fewer years of schooling than boys of the same age), (2) the importance of the problem (e.g., school attainment as a child is associated with adult earnings), (3) the policy (singular, not policies) to redress the problem (e.g., pay parents if girls complete the school year), and (4) implementation of the policies (e.g., logistics of payment). The paper should contain a table in an appendix in which you summarize what you found from previous studies. The appendix is not part of the 10-page limit and can be as long as needed. Below is a hypothetical example of what the table in the appendixmight look like.

Appendix: Table A: The use of conditional cash transfers to redress girl-boy disparities in school attainment in primary school (grades 1-5) in southern Zambia

Worldwide evidence that policy works / Comment / Implementation in southern Zambia [which is where you will work]
[a] Randomized controlled trial by Smith et al. (2014) in Panama shows that cash transfers increased girl's enrollment in 3rd grade by 40% compared to boys / 1. Study included a small sample (50 children)
2. Payment was equivalent to 20% of monthly household income / 1. Need at least 400 children and covering grades 1-5, not just 3rd grade.
2. 20% transfer seems reasonable.
3. Partner with Oxfam to implement the project since Oxfam already working in area
[b] Lewinson (2000) found that payments to girls in Malawi raised enrollment in grades 1-5 by 20%
[c] Jones (2015) found that in the Philippines, in-kind payments to girls worked better than monetary payments

About this table:

* Note specificity of demographic group, location, and grade as you review the literature

* The entire project centers on one policy/intervention: will payment increase attendance of girls compared with boys.

* For the policy there should be empirical studies and evidence from elsewhere that the policies worked, though it is an open question if they will work in the region of interest to the students. You need to show that what you propose has bite. The first 2 columns force you to read critically the study, focusing on a couple of details, and the third column forces you to transfer what you have learned from elsewhere to the study site. In this way your work scaffolds on what others have done before you.

* Recommendations are tightly linked to the policies. If the policy is to pay girls to attend school, we want to know how this would be done. Generic recommendations are of limited use; we want to know the details: who, what, and when people will do to bring about the policy. E.g., payments will occur once/year during the dry season because of accessibility, payments will be made directly to the girl because parents might restrict the funds to the girls, etc.

* Follow APA citation style and learn to use EndNotes for references. EndNotes is freely available at Brandeis as a download.

* The table is a summary; you can flesh out the ideas from the table in the 10-page paper.

* Work on the table first, and worry about the text later

[b] Final paper for students opting for the technical track: This should be a 5-page (maximum) paper containing an empirical analysis of the causes or consequence of human capital accumulation. The final paper should contain only 1-2 beautifully constructed tables showing your best regression results, and a narrative presenting your hypotheses, the measure of the variables you used, caveats and limitations of your analysis, and your empirical results (with a focus on the interpretation of the coefficients). No need to discuss control variables. I next give examples of prior papers that students have produced.

In one recent paper a student estimated the positive externality of education by measuring the impact of community mean schooling on own earnings and health. In another recent paper students estimated the comparative effectson earning of variables related to human capital, such as school attainment and academic skills versus personality traits. Others have used country-level data to estimate the association between country-level educational attainment and environmental degradation, and still others have gone on to estimate girl-boy intra household disparities in educational attainment. Copies of some recent student papers are in Latte. Students who want to pursue the technical track must find the data. In the next paragraph I explain how to find data.

Where to find data for students interested in the technical track. The datasets can be country-level, household-level, or individual-level. If you cannot find a suitable data set, but want to pursue the technical track, you can use one of my many data sets from native Amazonians in Bolivia. If you are interested in a region of the world, then you should find data from that area, but if you are more interested in an idea or in polishing technical skills, then the geographical origin of the data is less important, and you will have more choices. If you are interested in using micro-level datasets try: (1) the web sites of the World Bank’s Living Standard Measurement Survey or (2) BREAD (Bureau of Research and Economic Analysis of Development) – a large repository of household level data sets. If you are more interested in cross-country comparisons, the World Bank Development Report or several of the UN reports/data banks are ideal. If you have trouble finding a data source, then use the Bolivia data set Econ_of_Education_2018 in Stata in Latte. The appendix to this syllabus contains some pointers on how to get Stata and Latte contains some primers on how to use Stata.

[c] Steps to ensure the final paper moves along well. To ensure progress in the final assignment, students might want to turn in intermediate progress report of their work during weeks 2-6 (inclusive). Although I will not grade the intermediate reports, I will give you feedback soon after you turn them in. The details of the intermediate reports are described in the last two columns of Table 1 at the end of the syllabus. I have organized the intermediate reports so that they follow a sequential, logical order and help you move along to complete the final project. As the course unfolds I will provide more details on the intermediate steps than the details included in Table 1. I will help students without prior background in statistics who opt for the technical track, but students are responsible for identifying a suitable data set and making sure the data is in Stata.Last, depending on the demand, during the second half of each class I might allocate time to discuss general concerns about the final project.

Feedback to students. We will return the graded quiz shortly after you take the quiz, so you should be able to gauge how well you are doing as the course unfolds. Also, we will go over the quiz in class right after the quiz, so you should be able to assess your performance each week. Since you have the option of turning a progress reports on your paper every week, you will also receive my feedback on the final paper throughout the course, should you choose to submit intermediate reports.

Gender perspective. Much of the course focuses of why there are girl-boy disparities within the household, why mothers and fathers disagree when investing in their offspring, and the returns to human capital along gender lines.

Students with disabilities. See me soon if youare a student with a documented disability and if you wish to request a reasonable accommodation for this class. Brandeis cannot provide reasonable accommodations retroactively.

Policy about academic honesty. Academic integrity is central to the mission of educational excellence at Brandeis University. Each student is expected to turn in work completed independently, except when assignments specifically authorize collaborative effort. It is not acceptable to use the words or ideas of another person without proper acknowledgement of that source. This means that you must use footnotes and quotation marks to indicate the source of any phrases, sentences, paragraphs or ideas found in published volumes, on the internet, or created by another student. Violations of University policy on academic integrity, described in Section 3 of Rights and Responsibilities, may result in failure in the course or on the assignment, and could end in suspension from the University. If you are in doubt about the instructions for any assignment in this course, you must ask for clarification.

Readings

Class #1:

Kremer, M. et al. 2013. The challenge of education and learning in the developing world. Science 340:297-300.

Kremer, M. and A. Holla. 2009. Improving education in the developing world: What have we learned from randomized evaluations? Annual Reviews of Economics 1:513-542.

Class #2:

G. Psacharopoulous and H. A. Patrinos. 2004. Returns to investment in education: A further update. Education Economics 12:2:111-134.

Barbara L. Wolfe and Robert H. Haveman. 2003. Social and Nonmarket Benefits from Education in an Advanced Economy,” in Education in the 21st Century: Meeting the Challenges of a Changing World, Yolanda Kodrzycki, ed., Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, pp. 102-119.