Do Teachers Matter?. A psychology study hit the headlines last Friday under the banner ‘Teacher quality makes little difference, study shows’. AN AUSTRALIAN study has cast doubt over the “teacher effect”, by suggesting differences between teachers play only a minor role in how well a child will learn. The global study, led by the University of New England, monitored 500 pairs…
Monthly Archives July 2009
The Practical Trade off Between Class Size and Teacher Quality. My AFR oped today is on class size and teacher quality. Full text over the fold (with hyperlinks for anyone who wants more detail on the research). In a Class of Their Own, Australian Financial Review, 14 July 2009 Few education policies are more popular than class size reductions. Alongside…
Labour market. The unemployment numbers yesterday were again remarkably good relative to what is happening elsewhere in the world. The headline u/e rate is up to 5.8%. Since July last year we’ve lost about 160,000 full time jobs, but part time jobs are up about 127,000. Of course we need to create jobs to stop the unemployment rate from rising,…
Local Government first to 2.0. In Australia, Government 2.0 is being pursued at a national level. However, in the US, some big cities have moved first. Here is an article about New York City’s initiatives and here is another about Boston’s moves [HT: Darren Challis] Early days yet but very interesting. [Core Economics]
Inequality and Growth. Joshua Gans has a new paper out with Dan Andrews and Christopher Jencks, on the relationship between inequality and growth. We reach a finding that is pretty standard in this literature – when we restrict the sample to 1960-2000, more inequality seems to be good for growth. However, if the inequality arises from a transfer from the bottom…
Gov2.0 in the Age. Joshua Gans has an opinion piece in The Age today on Government 2.0. Taskforce needs to loosen grip on hidden public data Joshua Gans, The Age, 6th July 2009 (see also WA Today) The Government’s tight control of public information is outdated. UNLOCKING the information collection by governments — and deciding what information could be of social value —…