This study was undertaken to evaluate the effects of various wage rates on the minimum amounts of resources needed to obtain specified income levels on farms in Southwest Virginia. In addition, the aggregate effects of these wage rates on the structure and organization of farms in this area was determined. A linear programming model with added average outlay as a minimization criterion was constructed to determine the optimum resource use and enterprise combinations for' three representative farms to achieve operator labor incomes of $3,500, $5,000, $7,000, respectively. An aggregation model was used to determine the aggregate effects of these changes on farm organization and structure in the area. The study indicated that there are presently a large number of farms in the area with open land acreage below the minimum required to provide full-time productive employment for the operator. When available cropland is not sufficient to enable an individual to obtain a specified income, it is more profitable, in terms of minimizing average outlay, to purchase additional open land in order to obtain additional tobacco acreage and other cropland, than to utilize large amounts of existing unused pasture. An increase in hired labor wage rates, when an individual farm is achieving a specified income, may result in the hiring of additional labor, however, added amounts of non-labor inputs would increase at a faster rate than increases in amounts of labor used. Should all farms in the area adjust to attain the income levels specified in the study, farm numbers would decrease. An increase in the production of crops and livestock enterprises would result. This increased production would result in gross returns from the sales of crops of more than three times the amount presently received from crop sales in the area, and returns from livestock sales would be more than twice the amount presently received. This production would be produced by a total labor force of one-half, or less, the present labor force available on the farms in the study area. The results of this analysis substantiate the results of earlier studies which indicate that capital will be substituted for labor as farm wages are increased, and, an increase in aggregate farm production can be obtained with a decrease in total farm labor utilized. A need for some type of labor-saving innovation, as increased price supports for burley tobacco, will become necessary as the price of labor and other farm inputs increase. A study devoted to the development and analysis of some type of policy to encourage the combination of the smaller farms into larger, more efficient units is in order if all farm operators are to earn income levels comparable to that of off-farm employment. The resulting production from such a change would alter the type of farming presently conducted in the area. / Ph. D.

This thesis brings to the forefront of the existing literature the importance of analyzing transitional dynamics among different levels of schooling and to the labor market. I perform empirical analyses using confidential longitudinal survey data from Statistics Canada; employing program evaluation techniques, and regression modelling. The first chapter is joint work with Louis Christofides, Michael Hoy and Thanasis Stengos. We explore the forces that shape the development of aspirations and the achievement of grades during high school and the role that these aspirations, grades, and other variables play in educational outcomes such as going to university and graduating. We find that parental expectations and peer effects have a significant impact on educational outcomes through grades, aspirations, and their interconnectedness. Apart from this indirect path, parents and peers also influence educational outcomes directly. Policy measures that operate on parental influences may modify educational outcomes in desired directions. The second chapter estimates the wage returns to university quality. I distinguish between two distinct measures of university quality. The first is a survey-based university reputation ranking, and the second is a new ranking, which I construct from several university characteristics in order to objectively reflect the university quality. The findings indicate that the wage returns of having a Bachelor’s degree from a highly ranked university are 10.3% for women, and 13.4% for men. The returns are higher when comparing the wages in the top and bottom tails of the ranking distribution and gender differences are identified. The third chapter is a large-scale study on how students form and revise expectations. This affects their decision to drop out and/or change field of study once they have accessed post-secondary education. I find evidence that students change expectations and educational pathways as they are exposed to unexpected new information. This informs them about the quality of match between their own ability and the program that they are enrolled. Using non-parametric methods I show that this relationship is not linear.

Yes / The government increased the funding for regional development agencies to £2.3 billion in 2007/8, yet hard evidence on the effectiveness of the spending is difficult to find. Techniques for valuing benefits in difficult areas have existed for many years. They range from the hedonic methods and contingent valuation studies of environmental economists to the estimates of shadow wage rates used by development economists to take account of the economic value of additional employment. The latter have been used for years in some of the poorest developing countries in the world, as well as some countries in the European Union. Meanwhile some attempts to capture the indirect benefits of regeneration spending have surfaced through the United States with the ‘Social Return on Investment’ and Local Multiplier 3, yet the proponents of these approaches do not seem to have come across the abundant literature on the use of shadow pricing in the context of developing countries. This article attempts to explore the extent to which practices used and lessons learned in the economic analysis of environmental impacts and of investments in developing countries can inform the evaluation and appraisal of regeneration projects in the United Kingdom.

In this dissertation, we first develop a simple two-period model to examine the parent's optimal choice of children's time. We identify factors such as wage rate, school fees, education returns, degree of children's altruism toward their parents and the parents' discounting rate that influence the parents' optimal choice, and discuss their impacts on the optimal choice. Children's time is an important resource for rural households in developing economies, and it is typically allocated by the parents. Two basic uses for this resource are: working in the labor market and attending schools. Schooling today may make children more productive in the future. The opportunity cost of schooling is the forgone wage rate in the labor market. Allocation of children's time is therefore mainly determined by education return, wage rate in labor market and school fees. Many existing models in the literature cannot explain the coexistence of schooling, poverty and the coexistence of child labor and affluence. We extend our basic model to explain the above two paradoxes. We show that, when education return is high and the household is willing to endure extra hardship caused by the child attending school, the coexistence of schooling and poverty can emerge. On the other hand, when the wage rate for child labor and schooling fees are higher than education return, affluence and child labor can co-exist. Governments have adopted various policy tools to fight against child labor, among which the compulsory education law and free education programs stand out. Our basic model is then extended to examine how these two types of government policies may impact child labor. We show the relative performance of the two policies depend crucially on several factors, including the enforcement and the costs to the household of the compulsory education law. We use the recent Chinese experience in changing the compulsory education law to free education plan to illustrate and verify our theoretical prediction.

Submitted by Silvio Campos Guimarães (silvio.guimaraes@fgv.br) on 2014-04-21T20:28:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese - Silvio Campos Guimarães - 14-04-21.pdf: 780889 bytes, checksum: b9f1cc1a838cc4bbce96340a63642b1f (MD5) / Rejected by Katia Menezes de Souza (katia.menezes@fgv.br), reason: Prezado Silvio, Favor excluir o titulo da folha da ficha catalográfica. Qualquer dúvida entrar em contato. Kátia Menezes 3799-3236 on 2014-04-22T12:23:27Z (GMT) / Submitted by Silvio Campos Guimarães (silvio.guimaraes@fgv.br) on 2014-04-22T19:39:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese - Silvio Campos Guimarães - 14-04-21.pdf: 780573 bytes, checksum: ec53778564c24e5638e3f388481a14e9 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Katia Menezes de Souza (katia.menezes@fgv.br) on 2014-04-22T19:41:12Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese - Silvio Campos Guimarães - 14-04-21.pdf: 780573 bytes, checksum: ec53778564c24e5638e3f388481a14e9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-04-22T19:55:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese - Silvio Campos Guimarães - 14-04-21.pdf: 780573 bytes, checksum: ec53778564c24e5638e3f388481a14e9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-21 / The aim of this study is to analyze the effects of incentives linked to variable compensation programs on the performance of public servants. In this sense, we tried to identify studies that presented methods to correlate the performance with the adoption of incentive programs. It was noted that the literature is divergent as the association between the proportionate benefits and improving performance in the public sector. To contribute to the research and clarification of divergence, we developed an empirical model in order to measure the effects of programs on server performance. Further, tests were performed in a case study on the variable remuneration program applied to public servants in public schools in the state of São Paulo aiming to identify their impact on the performance of school principals and teachers. Since these servers are part of the education system, it was also tested whether the effects of the program directors and teachers have impact on the performance of their students. / O objetivo do presente estudo é analisar os efeitos dos incentivos vinculados a programas de remuneração variável sobre o desempenho do servidor público. Para isso se procurou identificar estudos que apresentassem métodos capazes de correlacionar o desempenho com a adoção dos programas de incentivo. Notou-se que a literatura é divergente quanto à associação entre os benefícios proporcionados e a melhoria do desempenho no setor público. Para contribuir com as pesquisas e com o esclarecimento da divergência observada, desenvolveu-se modelo empírico visando mensurar os efeitos dos programas no desempenho do servidor. Na sequência, foram realizados testes em um estudo de caso sobre o programa de remuneração variável aplicado aos servidores das escolas públicas do Estado de São Paulo objetivando identificar seus impactos no desempenho dos diretores de escola e dos professores. Considerando que estes servidores fazem parte do sistema de ensino, também foi testado se os efeitos do programa sobre o desempenho dos diretores e professores impactam o desempenho dos seus alunos.