The effect of compulsory schooling on health—evidence from biomarkers

Using data from the Health Survey for England and the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing, we estimate causal effects of schooling on health. Our study complements earlier studies exploiting two nationwide increases in British compulsory school leaving age in 1947 and 1973, respectively, by using biological stress markers as measures of health outcomes in addition to self-reported measures. We find a strong positive correlation between education and health, both self-rated and measured by blood fibrinogen and C-reactive protein levels. However, causal effects estimates based on compulsory schooling changes are ambiguous and remain statistically insignificant.     

In search of the glass ceiling: gender and recruitment to management in Norway's state bureaucracy1

There are still fewer female than male managers in Norway's state bureaucracy. This article asks if there are organizational barriers which prevent women from entering these positions. Is there really a glass ceiling, or must one look outside the organizational environment to find an explanation? Is it rather the case that the scarcity of female managers is caused by women's own preferences or their life situations outside work? Or do both contribute to the situation? The study shows that female managers are treated just as well as male managers in central parts of the state bureaucracy. Employers give equal shares of respect and attention to both genders. Female managers are encouraged to apply for the same number of jobs as men and are offered an equal number of jobs as men when they apply; in fact, women are offered more jobs than men, when one controls for the number of job applications. This indicates that organizational barriers are not the problem. The study also shows that there are no differences in work orientation between male and female managers. Female managers are just as ambitious as male managers. Nor do female managers find it more difficult than male managers to combine work and family life. So, how can one explain the low number of female managers? The study shows that one reason can be that female managers apply for management jobs less often than their male colleagues. The cause of this seems to be anticipated discrimination rather than lack of ambition or self‐confidence. However, this slows down women's movement into higher management positions in the state bureaucracy.     

Subsidizing “Stayers”? Effects of a Norwegian Child Care Reform on Marital Stability

Since January 1999, all parents in Norway with children aged 1 to 3 years who do not attend publicly subsidized day care are eligible for “cash‐for‐care” (CFC). One important purpose of the reform is to enable parents to spend more time with their children. We analyze whether the CFC reform has affected marital stability, using individual register data covering information on 130,265 observations of married couples. The results from both a natural experiment approach and from a matching procedure indicate that the CFC reform has reduced the likelihood of marital dissolution in the short run.     

Struktur und Entwicklung der Controllingforschung — Eine Zitations-und Kozitationsanalyse von Controllingbeiträgen in deutschsprachigen wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften von 1970 bis 2003

Zusammenfassung  Controlling ist eine vergleichsweise junge Teildisziplin der Betriebswirtschaftslehre, die sich mittlerweile in Praxis und Wissenschaft etabliert hat. Das Wissen über seine Entwicklung ist in weiten Teilen noch unscharf und weitgehend durch „anecdotal evidence” bestimmt. Die Autoren verfolgen daher in ihrem Aufsatz das Ziel, einen Beitrag zum besseren Verst?ndnis der Strukturen und Entwicklung der deutschsprachigen Controllingforschung zu leisten. Hierfür analysieren sie die Zitations-und Kozitationsstrukturen in 643 Beitr?gen zu Controllingthemen, die im Zeitraum von 1970 bis 2003 in sechs führenden wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften im deutschen Sprachraum ver?ffentlicht wurden. Diese Beitr?ge enthalten insgesamt 18.125 Quellen. Im Ergebnis der Analysen zeigt sich, dass das Zitierverhalten in der Controllingforschung im Vergleich zu anderen betriebswirtschaftlichen Teildisziplinen durch eine Reihe von Besonderheiten gepr?gt ist und dass sich die Strukturen der deutschsprachigen Controllingforschung über die Zeit stark ver?ndert haben.

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Structure and development of research on controlling — a citation analysis papers on controlling in German speaking journals from 1970 through 2003

Summary  Controlling is a relatively young discipline in the field of business administration, which has now established itself in practice as well as in theory. Our knowledge about its development is for the most part still diffuse and dominated by anecdotal evidence. In their paper, the authors pursue the goal of contributing to a better understanding of the structures and the development of the German-speaking research in controlling. For this purpose, they analyze the citations-and co-citations structures of 643 articles, focusing on controlling aspects published in six leading Germanic academic journals between 1970 and 2003. These papers comprise a total of 18,125 sources. The results of the analyses show that the attitude to cite in controlling research, compared to other disciplines in business administration, is characterized by a number of features. Furthermore, the structures of German controlling research have changed significantly over time.

     

Progression-free survival in oncological clinical studies: Assessment time bias and methods for its correction

Progression-free survival (PFS) is a frequently used endpoint in oncological clinical studies. In case of PFS, potential events are progression and death. Progressions are usually observed delayed as they can be diagnosed not before the next study visit. For this reason potential bias of treatment effect estimates for progression-free survival is a concern. In randomized trials and for relative treatment effects measures like hazard ratios, bias-correcting methods are not necessarily required or have been proposed before. However, less is known on cross-trial comparisons of absolute outcome measures like median survival times. This paper proposes a new method for correcting the assessment time bias of progression-free survival estimates to allow a fair cross-trial comparison of median PFS. Using median PFS for example, the presented method approximates the unknown posterior distribution by a Bayesian approach based on simulations. It is shown that the proposed method leads to a substantial reduction of bias as compared to estimates derived from maximum likelihood or Kaplan–Meier estimates. Bias could be reduced by more than 90% over a broad range of considered situations differing in assessment times and underlying distributions. By coverage probabilities of at least 94% based on the credibility interval of the posterior distribution the resulting parameters hold common confidence levels. In summary, the proposed approach is shown to be useful for a cross-trial comparison of median PFS.     

Labour supply effects of a cash-for-care subsidy

From 1999, all parents in Norway with children aged one to three, who did not attend publicly subsidised daycare, became eligible for a cash-for-care (CFC) subsidy. One effect of the CFC-subsidy was to increase in the relative price of external child care. This article analyses whether the CFC-subsidy has led to a reduction in the labour supply of mothers. A framework for evaluating policy reforms when reforms are equally and nation-wide accessible is put forward. The results show that the CFC-subsidy has reduced womens labour supply. The results are sustained after controlling for contemporaneous macroeconomic shocks, using a triple difference approach.The author thanks Hege Torp, Erling Barth and Harald Dale-Olsen at The Institute for Social Research, as well as participants at the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE) conference in Bilbao in June 2002, participants at the Lunch-seminar at Statistics Norway, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments. The work is financed by the Norwegian Research Council, grant #137230/530. The financial support is gratefully acknowledged.Responsible editor: Deborah Cobb-Clark.