The EU 2020 Agenda has taken an important step forward by setting the target for tertiary graduat... more The EU 2020 Agenda has taken an important step forward by setting the target for tertiary graduation rates at an ambitious 40%. This paper finds, however, that many countries in Europe, including the largest economy-Germany-will not be able to meet this target. Moreover, the crucial topic of educational quality is not even touched upon. Comparing the EU with China in total numbers, the authors find that China's education system already produces the same number of graduates with tertiary education as the whole EU15. Given the large output of graduates, which is the key to productive spending on R&D, this means that China is likely to soon become a growing power in innovation. Initially the country is expected to concentrate on incremental innovation, with radical innovation to come only later and it is here, the authors warn, that the quality of the university system might represent a major obstacle in the Chinese government's efforts to close the gap with the US and the EU15 in terms of innovation potential. CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the authors in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which they are associated. This paper was originally prepared for presentation at a conference on the "European Dimensions of Education Policies", held in Maastricht on 21-22 March 2010. The authors wish to thank the participants at the conference for valuable comments. The paper will be published in a forthcoming conference volume, also entitled The European Dimensions of Education Policy, edited by Hildegard Schneider and Jan de Groof of the University of Maastricht. It is pre-published here as a CEPS Working Document with their kind permission.
In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social... more In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social stratification through educational policies, and which countries put greater emphasis on intervening in the stratification process. First, we examine the relationship between education and welfare policies as measures of intervention in this process: do countries intervene in both education and welfaredriven by a 'stratification culture'? Or is there a trade-off between intervention in education and welfare, with certain countries prioritising one over the other?
ABSTRACT In this paper we construct a theory about how the expansion of higher education could be... more ABSTRACT In this paper we construct a theory about how the expansion of higher education could be associated with several factors that indicate a decrease in the quality of degrees. We assume that the expansion of tertiary education takes place through three channels, and show how they are likely to reduce average study time, academic requirements and average wages, and inflate grades. First, universities have an incentive to increase their student body through public and private funding schemes beyond a level where they can keep their academic requirements high. Second, due to skill-biased technological change, employers have an incentive to recruit staff with a higher education degree. Third, students have an incentive to acquire a college degree due to employers' preferences for such qualifications, the university application procedures and through the growing social value placed on education. We develop a parsimonious dynamic model in which a student, a college and an employer repeatedly make decisions about requirement levels, performance and wage levels. Our model shows that if i) universities have the incentive to decrease entrance requirements, ii) employers are more likely to employ staff with a higher education degree and iii) all types of students enrol in colleges, the final grade will not necessarily induce weaker students to study more to catch up with more able students. In order to re-establish a quality-guarantee mechanism, entrance requirements should be set at a higher level.
CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS' re... more CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS' research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent any institution with which they are affiliated.
<p>In this paper, we present the historical time series of enrollment rates in upper second... more <p>In this paper, we present the historical time series of enrollment rates in upper secondary schooling in five European countries. The presented data were examined in light of reform attempts aimed at expansions of schooling with the aim to derive lessons for the expansion of the tertiary sector. We were particularly interested in the speed and the differentiation of the expansion. We find that the expansion happened at different speed. It took 9 to 26 years for a country to massify its upper secondary education and further 11 to 41 years to universalize it, with gross enrollment rates reaching 80%. The expansion was slower in the leaders of expansion, such as the United Kingdom or Sweden. In contrast, laggards were able to catch up relatively fast, once the limiting conditions of expansion were removed. Although there has been a general trend towards expansion of the general upper secondary education, the popularity of vocational tracks has been diverse across examined countries.</p
The aim of this paper is to contribute to research on how and whether to politically guide labor ... more The aim of this paper is to contribute to research on how and whether to politically guide labor market integration of immigrants. Education is seen a politcal tool to promote integration. But integration is also a social process, in which personality and an ethnic self-concept play an important role for actively taking part in a new society. To study the eect and interplay of education and personality, we propose a model involving factor analysis and psychometric measures to account for latent personality and ethnic issues. By the means of the embedded factor model it can also address endogeneity problems arising from self-selection into education programs. It has been inspired by a model by Heckman, Stixrud, Urzua (2006), which studies the eect of cognitive and non-cognitive skills on labor market outcomes. Our model suers from the existence of unobservable counterfactuals, which makes OLS not a suitable estimation technique. This unobserv- ability also makes a likelihood function...
This paper analyses the impact of regulation on product sector mark-ups across the EU and confirm... more This paper analyses the impact of regulation on product sector mark-ups across the EU and confirms that less strict regulation tends to foster competition and reduce mark-up rates. The results also show that mark-ups in most EU countries and sectors have been declining over the last 15 years as a result of competition-friendly reforms. The paper also casts light on which areas of regulation are most important for mark-ups in individual sectors.
This paper compares trends in the structural unemployment rate and the NAWRU and considers their ... more This paper compares trends in the structural unemployment rate and the NAWRU and considers their implications for the assessment of cyclical economic conditions and the fiscal stance.
With the spread of internet, online job portals have become important forums for job matching by ... more With the spread of internet, online job portals have become important forums for job matching by employers and employees. Online job portals often collect large number of data in the form of job vacancies and resumes that can serve as a valuable source of information about the characteristics of labour market demand. Research using such data is limited but growing. Many methodological issues however remain open with respect to the representativeness of data and generalizability of findings. This paper focuses on methodological aspects of the usage of online job vacancy data and voluntary web-based surveys for the analysis of micro-level labour market dynamics. We highlight advantages and possible set-backs of online-gathered data and suggest strategies how selected methodological issues could be overcome. We argue that limited scope exists for representativeness adjustments of online job vacancies, but uniqueness and richness of this data can nevertheless be exploited to inform poli...
The Universalisation of Upper Secondary Education in Germany: Lessons for Tertiary Education? The... more The Universalisation of Upper Secondary Education in Germany: Lessons for Tertiary Education? The expansion of tertiary education is high on the political agenda in the European Union. In this paper we analyse a necessary ingredient for the expansion of tertiary education – the universalisation of upper secondary education – in order to draw lessons for the expansion of tertiary education by analogy. We examine speed, differentiation and drivers of this universalisation in Germany and compare our findings with the experiences in the Czech and Slovak Republics in order to demonstrate more general trends in educational policies in Europe. We find that the speed of universalisation depends on whether a country is a forerunner or a laggard. General tracks expanded more than vocational tracks; in Germany the two tracks complement one another. Finally we find that conflicting interest groups hampered serious reforms in Germany until the first PISA tests in 2000 placed its students well be...
In this Working paper we analyse what sort of innovative solutions have been put into practice in... more In this Working paper we analyse what sort of innovative solutions have been put into practice in schools to respond proactively to the situation of exclusion and inequality in education. Secondly, we analyse whether there is scope for these innovative solutions as a complementary solution to more traditional and larger-scale policy reforms. The paper is structured in two parts: in the first part we describe innovative practices that have been used to respond to specific social challenges that schools face within their working context such as social exclusion, marginalisation, difficulties in learning behaviour. In the second part we present findings from NEUJOBS on why traditional pro-equality measures – in particular late tracking and ability grouping – are not sufficient to decrease educational inequality and how social innovation practices could fill this gap. Section three concludes
Educational attainment, length of stay, di¤erences in national background and language skills pla... more Educational attainment, length of stay, di¤erences in national background and language skills play an acknowledged important role for the integration of immigrants. But integration is also a social process, which suggests that psychological factors are relevant. This paper explores whether and to what extent immigrants and their children need to believe in their ability to control their own success, in other words their sense of control. To quantify this personal trait I use a measure of an individuals sense of control over outcomes in life such as nding a job. This measure is known in psychology as "the locus of control". I rst estimate an exogenous measure. Then I address the problem that this measure is actually endogeneous in a labor market outcome equation by employing a model in which the sense of control is an endogenized latent factor in a simultaneous equation model. The determinants of this sense of control as well as its e¤ect on the probability of being empl...
CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS' re... more CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS' research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent any institution with which they are affiliated.
Using new international comparable data on intangible capital investment by business within a pan... more Using new international comparable data on intangible capital investment by business within a panel analysis from 1995-2005 in an EU-15 country sample, we detect a positive and significant relationship between intangible capital investment by business and labour productivity growth. This relationship is cross-sectional in nature and proves to be robust to a range of alterations. Our empirical analysis confirms previous findings that the inclusion of business intangible capital investment into the asset boundary of the national accounting framework increases the rate of change of output per worker more rapidly. In addition, intangible capital is able to explain a significant portion of the unexplained international variance in labour productivity growth and when incorporating business intangibles, capital deepening becomes an even more significant source of growth. The relationship is slightly stronger in the time period 1995-2000 and seems to be driven by the coordinated countries within the EU-15. CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the authors in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which they are associated.
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW Berlin This series presents research f... more SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW Berlin This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences:
In this paper, we present the historical time series of enrolment rates in upper secondary school... more In this paper, we present the historical time series of enrolment rates in upper secondary schooling in five European countries. The presented data were examined in light of reform attempts aimed at expansions of schooling with the aim to derive lessons for the expansion of the tertiary sector. We were particularly interested in the speed and the differentiation of the expansion. We find that the expansion happened at different speed. It took 9 to 26 years for a country to massify its upper secondary education and further 11 to 41 years to universalize it, with gross enrollment rates reaching 80%. The expansion was slower in the leaders of expansion, such as the United Kingdom or Sweden. In contrast, laggards were able to catch up relatively fast, once the limiting conditions of expansion were removed. Although there has been a general trend towards expansion of the general upper secondary education, the popularity of vocational tracks has been diverse across examined countries.
In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social... more In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social stratification through educational policies, and which countries put greater emphasis on intervening in the stratification process. First, we examine the relationship between education and welfare policies as measures of intervention in this process: do countries intervene in both education and welfaredriven by a 'stratification culture'? Or is there a trade-off between intervention in education and welfare, with certain countries prioritising one over the other?
NEUJOBS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within the N... more NEUJOBS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within the NEUJOBS research project and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. Texts published in this series are ultimately destined for academic publishing. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent any institution with which they are affiliated. See the back page for more information about the NEUJOBS project.
The EU 2020 Agenda has taken an important step forward by setting the target for tertiary graduat... more The EU 2020 Agenda has taken an important step forward by setting the target for tertiary graduation rates at an ambitious 40%. This paper finds, however, that many countries in Europe, including the largest economy-Germany-will not be able to meet this target. Moreover, the crucial topic of educational quality is not even touched upon. Comparing the EU with China in total numbers, the authors find that China's education system already produces the same number of graduates with tertiary education as the whole EU15. Given the large output of graduates, which is the key to productive spending on R&D, this means that China is likely to soon become a growing power in innovation. Initially the country is expected to concentrate on incremental innovation, with radical innovation to come only later and it is here, the authors warn, that the quality of the university system might represent a major obstacle in the Chinese government's efforts to close the gap with the US and the EU15 in terms of innovation potential. CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the authors in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which they are associated. This paper was originally prepared for presentation at a conference on the "European Dimensions of Education Policies", held in Maastricht on 21-22 March 2010. The authors wish to thank the participants at the conference for valuable comments. The paper will be published in a forthcoming conference volume, also entitled The European Dimensions of Education Policy, edited by Hildegard Schneider and Jan de Groof of the University of Maastricht. It is pre-published here as a CEPS Working Document with their kind permission.
In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social... more In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social stratification through educational policies, and which countries put greater emphasis on intervening in the stratification process. First, we examine the relationship between education and welfare policies as measures of intervention in this process: do countries intervene in both education and welfaredriven by a 'stratification culture'? Or is there a trade-off between intervention in education and welfare, with certain countries prioritising one over the other?
ABSTRACT In this paper we construct a theory about how the expansion of higher education could be... more ABSTRACT In this paper we construct a theory about how the expansion of higher education could be associated with several factors that indicate a decrease in the quality of degrees. We assume that the expansion of tertiary education takes place through three channels, and show how they are likely to reduce average study time, academic requirements and average wages, and inflate grades. First, universities have an incentive to increase their student body through public and private funding schemes beyond a level where they can keep their academic requirements high. Second, due to skill-biased technological change, employers have an incentive to recruit staff with a higher education degree. Third, students have an incentive to acquire a college degree due to employers&#39; preferences for such qualifications, the university application procedures and through the growing social value placed on education. We develop a parsimonious dynamic model in which a student, a college and an employer repeatedly make decisions about requirement levels, performance and wage levels. Our model shows that if i) universities have the incentive to decrease entrance requirements, ii) employers are more likely to employ staff with a higher education degree and iii) all types of students enrol in colleges, the final grade will not necessarily induce weaker students to study more to catch up with more able students. In order to re-establish a quality-guarantee mechanism, entrance requirements should be set at a higher level.
CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS' re... more CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS' research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent any institution with which they are affiliated.
<p>In this paper, we present the historical time series of enrollment rates in upper second... more <p>In this paper, we present the historical time series of enrollment rates in upper secondary schooling in five European countries. The presented data were examined in light of reform attempts aimed at expansions of schooling with the aim to derive lessons for the expansion of the tertiary sector. We were particularly interested in the speed and the differentiation of the expansion. We find that the expansion happened at different speed. It took 9 to 26 years for a country to massify its upper secondary education and further 11 to 41 years to universalize it, with gross enrollment rates reaching 80%. The expansion was slower in the leaders of expansion, such as the United Kingdom or Sweden. In contrast, laggards were able to catch up relatively fast, once the limiting conditions of expansion were removed. Although there has been a general trend towards expansion of the general upper secondary education, the popularity of vocational tracks has been diverse across examined countries.</p
The aim of this paper is to contribute to research on how and whether to politically guide labor ... more The aim of this paper is to contribute to research on how and whether to politically guide labor market integration of immigrants. Education is seen a politcal tool to promote integration. But integration is also a social process, in which personality and an ethnic self-concept play an important role for actively taking part in a new society. To study the eect and interplay of education and personality, we propose a model involving factor analysis and psychometric measures to account for latent personality and ethnic issues. By the means of the embedded factor model it can also address endogeneity problems arising from self-selection into education programs. It has been inspired by a model by Heckman, Stixrud, Urzua (2006), which studies the eect of cognitive and non-cognitive skills on labor market outcomes. Our model suers from the existence of unobservable counterfactuals, which makes OLS not a suitable estimation technique. This unobserv- ability also makes a likelihood function...
This paper analyses the impact of regulation on product sector mark-ups across the EU and confirm... more This paper analyses the impact of regulation on product sector mark-ups across the EU and confirms that less strict regulation tends to foster competition and reduce mark-up rates. The results also show that mark-ups in most EU countries and sectors have been declining over the last 15 years as a result of competition-friendly reforms. The paper also casts light on which areas of regulation are most important for mark-ups in individual sectors.
This paper compares trends in the structural unemployment rate and the NAWRU and considers their ... more This paper compares trends in the structural unemployment rate and the NAWRU and considers their implications for the assessment of cyclical economic conditions and the fiscal stance.
With the spread of internet, online job portals have become important forums for job matching by ... more With the spread of internet, online job portals have become important forums for job matching by employers and employees. Online job portals often collect large number of data in the form of job vacancies and resumes that can serve as a valuable source of information about the characteristics of labour market demand. Research using such data is limited but growing. Many methodological issues however remain open with respect to the representativeness of data and generalizability of findings. This paper focuses on methodological aspects of the usage of online job vacancy data and voluntary web-based surveys for the analysis of micro-level labour market dynamics. We highlight advantages and possible set-backs of online-gathered data and suggest strategies how selected methodological issues could be overcome. We argue that limited scope exists for representativeness adjustments of online job vacancies, but uniqueness and richness of this data can nevertheless be exploited to inform poli...
The Universalisation of Upper Secondary Education in Germany: Lessons for Tertiary Education? The... more The Universalisation of Upper Secondary Education in Germany: Lessons for Tertiary Education? The expansion of tertiary education is high on the political agenda in the European Union. In this paper we analyse a necessary ingredient for the expansion of tertiary education – the universalisation of upper secondary education – in order to draw lessons for the expansion of tertiary education by analogy. We examine speed, differentiation and drivers of this universalisation in Germany and compare our findings with the experiences in the Czech and Slovak Republics in order to demonstrate more general trends in educational policies in Europe. We find that the speed of universalisation depends on whether a country is a forerunner or a laggard. General tracks expanded more than vocational tracks; in Germany the two tracks complement one another. Finally we find that conflicting interest groups hampered serious reforms in Germany until the first PISA tests in 2000 placed its students well be...
In this Working paper we analyse what sort of innovative solutions have been put into practice in... more In this Working paper we analyse what sort of innovative solutions have been put into practice in schools to respond proactively to the situation of exclusion and inequality in education. Secondly, we analyse whether there is scope for these innovative solutions as a complementary solution to more traditional and larger-scale policy reforms. The paper is structured in two parts: in the first part we describe innovative practices that have been used to respond to specific social challenges that schools face within their working context such as social exclusion, marginalisation, difficulties in learning behaviour. In the second part we present findings from NEUJOBS on why traditional pro-equality measures – in particular late tracking and ability grouping – are not sufficient to decrease educational inequality and how social innovation practices could fill this gap. Section three concludes
Educational attainment, length of stay, di¤erences in national background and language skills pla... more Educational attainment, length of stay, di¤erences in national background and language skills play an acknowledged important role for the integration of immigrants. But integration is also a social process, which suggests that psychological factors are relevant. This paper explores whether and to what extent immigrants and their children need to believe in their ability to control their own success, in other words their sense of control. To quantify this personal trait I use a measure of an individuals sense of control over outcomes in life such as nding a job. This measure is known in psychology as "the locus of control". I rst estimate an exogenous measure. Then I address the problem that this measure is actually endogeneous in a labor market outcome equation by employing a model in which the sense of control is an endogenized latent factor in a simultaneous equation model. The determinants of this sense of control as well as its e¤ect on the probability of being empl...
CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS' re... more CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS' research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent any institution with which they are affiliated.
Using new international comparable data on intangible capital investment by business within a pan... more Using new international comparable data on intangible capital investment by business within a panel analysis from 1995-2005 in an EU-15 country sample, we detect a positive and significant relationship between intangible capital investment by business and labour productivity growth. This relationship is cross-sectional in nature and proves to be robust to a range of alterations. Our empirical analysis confirms previous findings that the inclusion of business intangible capital investment into the asset boundary of the national accounting framework increases the rate of change of output per worker more rapidly. In addition, intangible capital is able to explain a significant portion of the unexplained international variance in labour productivity growth and when incorporating business intangibles, capital deepening becomes an even more significant source of growth. The relationship is slightly stronger in the time period 1995-2000 and seems to be driven by the coordinated countries within the EU-15. CEPS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within CEPS research programmes and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the authors in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which they are associated.
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW Berlin This series presents research f... more SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW Berlin This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences:
In this paper, we present the historical time series of enrolment rates in upper secondary school... more In this paper, we present the historical time series of enrolment rates in upper secondary schooling in five European countries. The presented data were examined in light of reform attempts aimed at expansions of schooling with the aim to derive lessons for the expansion of the tertiary sector. We were particularly interested in the speed and the differentiation of the expansion. We find that the expansion happened at different speed. It took 9 to 26 years for a country to massify its upper secondary education and further 11 to 41 years to universalize it, with gross enrollment rates reaching 80%. The expansion was slower in the leaders of expansion, such as the United Kingdom or Sweden. In contrast, laggards were able to catch up relatively fast, once the limiting conditions of expansion were removed. Although there has been a general trend towards expansion of the general upper secondary education, the popularity of vocational tracks has been diverse across examined countries.
In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social... more In this Working Document we look at which OECD countries deliberately attempt to reproduce social stratification through educational policies, and which countries put greater emphasis on intervening in the stratification process. First, we examine the relationship between education and welfare policies as measures of intervention in this process: do countries intervene in both education and welfaredriven by a 'stratification culture'? Or is there a trade-off between intervention in education and welfare, with certain countries prioritising one over the other?
NEUJOBS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within the N... more NEUJOBS Working Documents are intended to give an indication of work being conducted within the NEUJOBS research project and to stimulate reactions from other experts in the field. Texts published in this series are ultimately destined for academic publishing. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent any institution with which they are affiliated. See the back page for more information about the NEUJOBS project.
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