Joint Conference on
Schooling and Human Capital Formation in the Global Economy:
Revisiting the Equity-Efficiency Quandary
Call for Papers
More than 30 years ago, Theodore W. Schultz edited an issue of the Journal
of Political Economy entitled "Investment in Education: The Equity-Efficiency
Quandary." In today's global economy, concerns about international
competitiveness have intensified the discussion as to whether and to what
extent the one educational objective must be sacrificed in order to achieve
the other, making issues surrounding the provision of education more pressing
and unresolved than ever. While the focus of the debate in the early 1970s
was on higher education, the roots of the educational quandary lie in
the early years of schooling - both because early learning is a requisite
for successful later learning, and because rapid structural changes in
modern global economies may require a solid foundation of general knowledge
as distinct from specific knowledge that may become obsolete.
To revisit the question of the educational equity-efficiency quandary,
with a special focus on the role of school systems for human capital formation
in the global economy, CESifo Munich and PEPG of Harvard University will
jointly organise a conference in Munich on 3-4 September 2004. By bringing
scholarly perspectives together from both sides of the Atlantic, the scientific
organisers, Paul E. Peterson (Harvard) and Ludger Woessmann (Munich),
hope to elicit new international perspectives on this pressing research
question.
Invited papers will be presented by Eric Hanushek (Stanford), Stephen
Machin (London School of Economics), Thomas Nechyba (Duke), and Hessel
Oosterbeek (Amsterdam).
Researchers working in the field are invited to submit proposed (draft)
papers electronically by 31 January 2004 to pepg_administrator@ksg.harvard.edu
or woessmann@ifo.de. In particular,
both theoretical and empirical policy-oriented papers in the following
areas will be given serious consideration for inclusion in the conference
proceedings:
- Is there a trade-off between efficiency and equal opportunity in human
capital formation?
- What effects do equality-enhancing interventions have on human capital
production and growth?
- Do tracked or segregated schooling systems increase the equity-efficiency
quandary?
- What are the productivity and equity effects of choice-based educational
systems?
- Can schooling systems mitigate the inequality-enhancing impact of skill-biased
technological change, and can they facilitate intergenerational mobility?
- How does the relative emphasis on general versus specific knowledge
affect the equity-efficiency quandary in times of rapid structural change?
Accepted papers will be published in a conference volume in the CESifo
Seminar Series with MIT Press, subject to a refereeing process. Submission
of papers for the conference implies their submission for initial publication
in the conference proceedings. The organisers will provide accommodation
and will reimburse economy travel costs for authors of accepted papers;
honoraria will be provided upon receipt of final papers accepted for publication.
Further questions regarding the organisation and scientific content of
the conference should be addressed to the conference organisers:
Paul E. Peterson: ppeterso@latte.harvard.edu
Ludger Woessmann: woessmann@ifo.de
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