This paper studies the role of the expansion of higher education supply in increasing the equality of post-secondary education opportunities. It examines Italy�s experience during the 1990s, when policy changes prompted universities to offer a wider range of degree courses and to open new...

More explicitly than before, universities have become instruments of industrial and economic growth policies. This has led to an increase in accountability regimes and in the application of the so called New Public Management on universities hitherto governed by a Humboldtian, Weberian, or...

This study gives an account of theory, models and measurements of returns to higher education, seen as the results of economically rational investment decisions. The focus is on returns in the form of increased wages and salaries. These returns vary considerably between different countries and...

The rapid globalization in recent years has created a radically new competitive situation for the rich industrialized countries. Newly industrialized countries and not least China have become more and more successful in penetrating the markets in the rich industrialized countries with...

During the past fifteen years, government policy has decentralized post-secondary education in Sweden. We investigate the economic effects of this decentralization policy on the level of innovation and its spatial distribution in the Swedish economy. We rely upon micro data on patent activity...

Human capital theory suggests that higher education, as a means of capability creation and of ability screening, is positively associated with individuals’ success as entrepreneurs. This paper argues that social capital perspectives, in particular the theory of local embeddedness and team...

This paper analyzes peer effects among university scientists. Specifically, it investigates whether the number of peers and their average quality affects the productivity of researchers in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. The usual endogeneity problems related to estimating peer effects are...

The recent industrial action taken by the Association of University Teachers (AUT) has given the issue of academic pay high prominence in the UK press. There appears to be a remarkable consensus that higher education academic salaries are too low, relative to other groups of workers in the UK,...

University-Business Cooperation (UBC) is a relationship in flux, reflecting issues specific to the transition from an industrial to a knowledge society. UBC is undergoing a transformation from a dyadic university-business relationship, aimed at solving firm problems, sourcing new products or...

We investigate the impact of information about student satisfaction on university choice, using data from the UK’s National Student Survey (NSS) and on applications to undergraduate degree courses. We show that the NSS has a small, statistically significant effect on applications at the...