Browsing by Subject "Early Childhood Education"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Essays on dynamic public policy.
    (2009-08) Yazici, Hakki
    This dissertation considers optimal government policy when agents in the economy are privately informed about their various characteristics. The first chapter deals with optimal education policy. Raising children is an important productive activity for a society since children's outcomes depend on their parents' investments. This paper develops an intergenerational framework in which adult outcomes are determined by parental investment, analyzes Pareto efficient allocations, and derives implications for policy. There are two key frictions: first, parental altruism type is private information; second, it is impossible for society to monitor parental investment. The main characterization result is that in any ex post Pareto efficient allocation, in any generation, society should transfer extra resources to all poor parents. This implies all agents, including the poor, should live above a certain welfare level, independent of whether or not society cares about them. Regarding implementation, the paper considers a market structure in which parents cannot sign contracts binding their descendants. Under such a market structure, implementing any Pareto efficient allocation requires government intervention. A feature shared by all Pareto efficient income tax schedules is that income taxes of agents with currently low income are negative. The second chapter analyzes efficient allocation of resources in an economy in which agents are initially heterogeneous with regard to their wealth levels and whether they have ideas or not. An agent with an idea can start a business that generates random returns. Agents have private information about (1) their initial types, (2) how they allocate their resources, and (3) the realized returns. The unobservability of returns creates a novel motive for subsidizing agents who have ideas but lack resources to invest in them. The unobservability of initial types and actions implies that the subsidy that poor agents with ideas receive is limited by incentive compatibility: the society should provide other agents with enough incentives so that they do not claim to be poor and have ideas. The paper then provides an implementation of the constrained-efficient allocation in an incomplete markets setup that is similar to the U.S. Small Business Administration's Business Loan Program.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The teachings of our ancestors: a vision of Ojibwe language and culture revitalization for young children in the Red Cliff Community.
    (2009-06) Gokee-Rindal, Delores Ellen
    This study explores Ojibwe language and cultural knowledge for young tribal children (prenatal through age five) in Red Cliff, a small, rural Ojibwe reservation located in northern Wisconsin. Ojibwe language and culture in the Red Cliff community is severely threatened, with only one fluent speaker remaining whose first language is Ojibwe. In the context of language and culture loss, this study reviews the devastating effects of oppression and the history of American Indian education. Theories of language acquisition as well successful models of indigenous language and culture revitalization were examined. Tribal elders and community members with language and cultural knowledge were engaged in a collaborative process to explore what young Ojibwe children might know, learn, and understand about their language and culture. Their voices were heard, honored, and retold for the purpose of strengthening language and culture revitalization efforts in the community.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Three Essays on Using Economic Evaluations for Scaling Up Early Childhood Education and Development Programs
    (2023-05) Varshney, Nishank
    Despite growing evidence about the significance of Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs, public investment has been relatively low, resulting in slower expansion of evidence-based ECD programs. This dissertation consists of three essays on conducting and using economic evaluation methods to scale up early childhood education and development programs. Specifically, I conduct a benefit-cost analysis of the Chicago Child-Parent Center (CPC) preschool program, with a focus on health outcomes in mid-adulthood. Further, I analyze the costs of implementing the expansion of the CPC program to four districts in the Midwestern US. I discuss the costs required to scale up an evidence-based high-quality preschool program with a focus on estimating the marginal costs of each of the program’s six quality elements. Finally, I review the existing economic evaluations of Nurse-Family Partnership Home Visiting programs and suggest two innovative financial mechanisms – Pay for Success (PFS) and Data-Driven Philanthropy that can be used to expand access to home-visiting programs by leveraging public-private partnerships.