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Children left behind: self-confidence of pupils in competitive environments
Federičová, Miroslava ; Pertold, Filip ; Smith, Michael
Early-tracking systems naturally divide many classes of 11 years old students into two groups:\nstudents preparing for exams to enter better schools and everyone else, who decide not to compete for selective schools. Utilizing TIMSS data and a follow-up study in the Czech Republic, which has an early-tracking system similar to other European states following the German model, we show that this environment has a detrimental effect on the self-confidence of pupils in mathematics who do not apply for selective schools but have peers in their classroom who do apply. In particular, we show that girls who do not apply for selective schools experience a 11% drop in confidence in mathematics if they have four applicants among classmates and this effect is even larger if the applicants are successful in the admission process. We focus on self-confidence in mathematics as an outcome variable because the literature suggests it is directly linked to pupils' motivation to study STEM fields as well as subsequent educational achievement. Our results suggest that the decrease in selfconfidence among girls is long lasting and implies that gender gaps in self-confidence can be a result of the competitive environment of the educational system.
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Salaries of Czech teachers remain low
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, V.
Teacher salaries, in the long term, co-determine the quality of teachers and education in schools. The relative teachers’ pay compared with salaries in alternative professions in a country also determines what ranks prospective young teachers recruit from, which of them ultimately become teachers and whether the best of them sustain a long-term career in teaching. For long relative salaries of Czech teachers have been among the lowest among more than 30 most developed countries of the world (OECD). Also in 2015, as the study shows, increases in teacher salaries only hardly kept pace with the trend of salaries of other tertiary-educated public and private sector employees. In the last decade, the unfavourable relative pay situation of Czech teachers has effectively not changed.
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Gender in banking and mortgage behavior
Jurajda, Štěpán ; Janhuba, R.
Compared to men, women, even Önancial professionals, exhibit higher risk aversion. We exploit random assignment of clients to banking advisors (ëprivate bankersí) in a large Czech bank to study the e§ects of advisor gender on the probability of mortgage issuance and on the probability that a newly issued mortgage is insured, which we interpret as corresponding to risk averse mortgage behavior. Male advisors do not substantially a§ect the chances that their clients will take a new mortgage, but the mortgages that they issue are dramatically less likely to be insured, particularly so for female clients who never had an insured loan with the bank.
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Does the study abroad experience affect attitudes towards other nationalities?
Cahlíková, Jana
Every year, millions of people relocate to a foreign country for school or work. This research provides evidence of how such international experience shifts preferences and stereotypes related to other nationalities. I use participation in the Erasmus study abroad program as a source of variation in international experience. Students who are ready to participate in the Erasmus program are chosen as a control group for students who have returned from studies abroad. Individuals make decisions in a Trust Game and in a Triple Dictator Game to decompose changes to statistical discrimination from changes to taste-based discrimination. Results show that while students do not differentiate between partners from Northern and Southern Europe in the Trust Game prior to an Erasmus study abroad, students who have returned from Erasmus studies abroad begin to exhibit less trust towards partners from the South. Behavior towards other nationalities in the Triple Dictator Game is not affected by the Erasmus study experience. Overall, the results suggest that participants learn ab out cross-country variation in cooperative behavior while abroad and therefore statistical discrimination increases with international experience.
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