Alfredo R. Paloyo

Active-learning pedagogical practices are encouraged in the education literature to improve academic outcomes. The research reported in this paper explored the effect of real-time interactive polling—a type of active learning—on three measures of academic outcome: final marks, student engagement, and failure probability. To provide credible impact estimates, a cluster randomized controlled trial in an introductory statistics class was conducted. With a little over 500 students, nine out of the 24 tutorial classes were conducted with real-time quizzes; the other 15 tutorial classes served as control classes. The results showed that this active-learning technique did not impact final marks and the probability of failing the subject. It did, however, increase tutorial attendance by about 24%, which corresponded to about 1.6 additional hours compared to the control classes. The findings support the literature on the benefits of classroom response systems that increase student engagement, student interest, and enjoyment from smaller group discussions.

This paper deals with the question of whether migrants pay a rent premium for apartments of comparable quality and neighborhood characteristics. We use a two‐step selection‐correction model augmented by a control function to account for nonrandom neighborhood choice. The estimation sample is a uniquely assembled panel comprising the Socio‐Economic Panel (SOEP), information on household and apartment characteristics, as well as georeferenced data describing neighborhood quality. Our estimates reveal that people with migration backgrounds are not penalized in the German local rental market in terms of higher rental payments.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the policy measures to control its spread—lockdowns, physical distancing, and social isolation—have coincided with the deterioration of people’s mental well-being. We use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) to document how this phenomenon is related to the situation of working parents who now have to manage competing time demands across the two life domains of work and home. We show that the deterioration of mental health is worse for working parents, and that it is strongly related to increased financial insecurity and time spent on childcare and home schooling. This burden is not shared equally between men and women, and between richer and poorer households. These inequalities ought to be taken into account when crafting policy responses.

We investigate the relationship between self-reported importance of religion and risky behaviors in adolescence using data from a large and detailed longitudinal study of English teenagers. We use school and individual fixed effects, and treatment effects with inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment, controlling for a rich set of characteristics, including individual personality traits. Our results show that individuals with low religiosity are more likely to engage in risky health behaviors.

We investigate peer ability effects on high-stakes test scores at ages 16 and 18, and on the probability of university attendance. To account for endogeneity in peer ability, we use the average ability of the primary school peers of one’s secondary school peers, excluding those from the same primary school of the individual, as an instrumental variable for average secondary school peer ability. Our results show that average peer quality has a small effect on an individual’s test scores, and a larger proportion of low-quality peers has a significantly detrimental effect on achievements of an average student. Furthermore, peer ability seems to have a stronger effect on students at the bottom of the grade distribution, especially at age 16.

This article examines the causal effects of the national (pro-poor) targeted programmes (NTPs) on both poverty incidence and inequality in Vietnam over the period 2002–2010. While the links between NTPs and poverty alleviation and income inequality have previously been analysed independently, this study is the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of NTPs expenditure on poverty and inequality simultaneously. Applying the system generalized method of moments estimator to a panel of Vietnamese regional data, we are unable to establish that NTPs have significantly mitigated poverty incidence. However, we estimate that NTPs have significantly increased inequality. We offer possible explanations why the NTPs have resulted in these unintended outcomes and discuss potential policies which can reduce both poverty and inequality.