Colm P Harmon

• The University of Sydney

Undergraduate study behaviours, principally lecture attendance and additional study, are shown to predict better student achievement by many researchers. Despite this, there is not much evidence on the determinants of these behavioural inputs. This is the first paper to explore the determinants of study behaviours across multiple subject areas; and...

Comparing self-assessed indicators of subjective outcomes (such as health, or job satisfaction) across countries or socio-economic groups is often hampered by the fact that different groups use different response scales. Anchoring vignettes are used as a tool to identify and correct for such differences. The paper develops a model in which objectiv...

While there is an extensive literature on intergenerational transmission of economic outcomes (education, health and income for example), many of the pathways through which these outcomes are transmitted are not as well understood. We address this deficit by analysing the relationship between socio-economic status and child outcomes in university,...

Prospective studies have linked negative affect with hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. This study aims to identify if cardiovascular activity in day-to-day settings is related to affect levels as assessed using the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004). 186 people underwent baseline physio...

This paper uses novel measures of individual differences that produce new insights about student inputs into the (higher) education production function. The inputs examined are lecture attendance and additional study-hours. The data were collected through a websurvey that the authors designed. The analysis includes novel measures of individual di_e...

Despite the increasing coverage and prevalence of equality legislation and the general alignment of key determining characteristics such as educational attainment, gender differentials continue to persist in labour market outcomes, including earnings. Recently, evidence has been found supporting the role of typically unobserved non-cognitive factor...

This paper tests for a number of survey effects in the elicitation of expenditure items. In particular we examine the extent to which individuals use features of the expenditure question to construct their answers. We test whether respondents interpret question wording as researchers intend and examine the extent to which prompts, clarifications an...

This paper considers the relationship between the economic concept of time preference and relevant concepts from psychology and biology. Using novel data from a time diary study conducted in Ireland that combined detailed psychometric testing with medical testing and real-time bio-tracking, we examine the extent to which individual differences in f...

Policy discussions to ameliorate socioeconomic (SES) inequalities are increasingly focused on investments in early childhood. Yet such interventions are costly to implement, and clear evidence on the optimal time to intervene to yield a high economic and social return in the future is meagre. The majority of successful early childhood interventions...

"This article examines the results of single-equation regression models of the determinants of alcohol consumption patterns among college students modeling a rich variety of covariates including gender, family and peer drinking, tenure, personality, risk perception, time preferences, and age of drinking onset. The results demonstrate very weak inco...

The study team gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences under the Thematic Research Programmes initiative. Mark McGovern from UCD and Dr. Berengere Davin from NUIG provided substantial and excellent assistance in the drafting of this document. Christianne Hellmanzik, Lorna Sweeney an...

As employers respond to intensive global competition through the deregulation of labor, job insecurity has become a widespread problem. It has been shown to have significant health impacts in a growing number of workers, but less is known about its social distribution, the mechanisms through which it may act, and the moderating effects of gender, s...

This paper investigates the robustness of recent findings on the effect of parental education and income on child health. We are particularly concerned about spurious correlation arising from the potential endogeneity of parental income and education. We adopt an instrumental variables approach and our results suggest that the parental income and e...

This paper estimates the risk preferences of cotton farmers in Southern Peru, using the results from a multiple-price-list lottery game. Assuming that preferences conform to two of the leading models of decision under risk--Expected Utility Theory (EUT) and Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT)--we find strong evidence of moderate risk aversion. Once we...

This paper examines students’ perceptions of excessive drinking using statistical vignettes based on standard alcohol misuse markers used in the WHO Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). Quantitative analyses revealed stark heterogeneity in students’ perceptions of alcohol excess both in terms of their own self-rated excessiveness and...

The Irish health care system offers a tax financed, universal entitlement to public care at a nominal user fee, nonetheless 50% of the Irish population purchase private health insurance. This paper empirically models the propensity to insure as a function of individual and household characteristics using panel data analysis and compares three alter...

This article illustrates the key findings from the economics literature on education investment, in particular the findings focused on early child investment. The article shows the impact of early investment, particularly evidence from experimental programmes on later life outcomes such as labour market performance and societal position. It demonst...

We estimate the causal effect of mandatory participation in the military service on the involvement in criminal activities. We exploit the random assignment of young men to military service in Argentina through a draft lottery to identify this causal effect. Using a unique set of administrative data that includes draft eligibility, participation in...

We investigate the relationship between early school-leaving and parental education and paternal income using UK Labour Force Survey data. OLS estimation reveals modest effects of income, stronger effects of maternal education relative to paternal, and stronger effects on sons than daughters. Using IV to simultaneously model the endogeneity of pare...

This paper outlines an econometric model of the level of burglary in Ireland between 1952 and 1998. We explain the evolution of the trend in Burglary in terms of demographic factors - in this case the share of young males in the population, the macro-economy in the form of consumer expenditure and two characteristics of the criminal justice system...

This paper uses the measures of basic skills (or functional literacy) in the International Adult Literacy Survey to examine the impact of education and basic skills on earnings across a large number of countries. We show that the estimated return to formal education is sensitive to the inclusion of these measures: excluding them biases the return t...

Education has an important effect on wages but it not clear whether this is because education raises productivity or because education is simply a signal of ability. We implement a number of existing tests for discriminating between these two explanations and find that they do not support the signalling hypothesis. However, we have severe reservati...

Irish third-level graduates benefit significantly from their education in the form of higher earnings. This private "rate of return" is higher in Ireland than in most other OECD countries. This implies a strong case in equity terms for tuition fees. The abolition of fees in 1994 did not increase equality of access to higher education as intended, b...

In this paper a rich and innovative dataset, the International Adult Literacy Survey, is used to examine the impact of functional literacy on earnings. We show that the estimated return to formal education is sensitive to the inclusion of literacy - excluding it biases the return to education in many countries by significant amounts. Literacy itsel...

In this paper we focus on education as a private decision to invest in “human capital” and the estimation of the rate of return to that private investment. While the literature is replete with studies that estimate the rate of return using regression methods where the estimated return is obtained as the coefficient on a years of education variable...

The purpose of this study is to set out detailed proposals to examine empirically the state of competition within the nonlife insurance market in Ireland and its effects on consumers. The focus will be on motor, public liability (PL) and employer liability (EL) insurance.

This Paper examines cross-country variations in the return to schooling for men and women and considers some of the stylised facts that have emerged from the extensive international literature on private returns to schooling. We examine the relationship across countries between these returns and a range of controls that can be grouped into three br...

We extend the standard human capital earnings function to include dispersion in the return to schooling by treating the return as a random coefficient (RC). If the rapid expansion in participation in higher education has been brought about by dipping further into the ability distribution, we should observe a rise in the variance of returns. Alterna...

Using a dataset that allows consistent cross-country comparisons the non-linearity in a conventional earnings equation is tested with respect to schooling. The findings suggest that the assumption of linearity is not robust and that there are well-determined positive returns to the completion of educational levels. However, inferences are sensitive...

Education and Earnings in Europe is based on a two year pan-European research programme and presents an in-depth analysis of the returns to education in Europe. The book begins with a critical review of the literature which compares and contrasts the issues involved in the estimation of these returns. A central message of this review, based on the...

This paper exploits an unusual policy reform that had the effect of reducing the direct cost of schooling in Ireland in the late 1960’s. This gave rise to an increased level of schooling but with effects that vary substantially across family background. This interaction of educational reform and family background generates a set of instrumental var...

This paper uses pooled cross-section data on recent school leavers in Ireland to model the determinants of labour market status and wages for young adults. Firstly we use a multinomial logit model to analyze whether individuals exit school to employment, unemployment or higher education. Family background is an important predictor for participation...

In this paper a rich and innovative dataset, the International Adult Literacy Survey, is used to examine the impact of functional literacy on earnings. The IALS surveys 12 OECD countries and sub-regions via a consistent questionnaire and includes a number of tests of numeracy and literacy, as well as basic labour market information. This paper exam...

Until the late 1960s, state schooling in England and Wales was determined by an ability test of pupils at age 11 which had an effect on both the quantity and quality of education. By estimating the relationship between earnings and earlier schooling during a period when school areas changed from selective to non-selective education, we consider how...

This paper uses pooled cross-section data on recent school leaves in Ireland to model the determinants of labour market status and wages for young adults. Firstly we use a multinomial logit model to analyze whether individuals exit school to employment, unemployment or higher education reflecting the degree of rationing in the system.

This paper investigates the impact of international migration on technical efficiency, resource allocation and income from agricultural production of family farming in Albania. The results suggest that migration is used by rural households as a pathway out of agriculture: migration is negatively associated with both labour and non-labour input allo...

This paper produced a rigorous analysis of the human resource interventions which formed an important part of the EU Community Support Framework implemented in Ireland in the period 1994 to 1999. The study investigates the impact of both initial education and of continuing education, training and temporary employment programmes. The study utilises...

In this paper a rich and innovative dataset, the International Adult Literacy Survey, is used to examine the impact of cognitive skill/functional literacy earnings. The IALS surveys 12 OECD countries and sub-regions via a consistent questionnaire and includes a number of tests of numeracy and literacy, as well as basic labour market information. Th...

In this paper we provide an analytical review of previous estimates of the rate of return on schooling investments and measure how these estimates vary by country, over time, and by estimation method. We find evidence of reporting (or "file drawer") bias in the estimates and, after due account is taken of this bias, we find that differences due to...

We explore the possibility that different instruments may affect different margins of the schooling distribution, and consistent with recent evidence we find a large, significant downward bias in the least squares estimate of the returns to schooling and that the estimates are stable with respect to the choice of instruments. However when we remove...

One measure of the health of the Social Security system is the difference between the market value of the trust fund and the present value of benefits accrued to date. How should present values be computed for this calculation in light of future uncertainties? We think it is important to use market value. Since claims on accrued benefits are not cu...

Recent media attention has focused on the low ranking of Ireland in a major international study on literacy. In this paper we examine the dataset used in these studies to consider the reason behind the low ranking. We find significant evidence that the underlying reason for this is the low level of formal schooling of older individuals, possibly du...

During the nineties, Europe became a major recipient of FDIs but Italian regions have been largely excluded from this process. Was it due to their characteristics, or were Italian regions “doomed” by a negative country effect? In this paper we address this issue by estimating the determinants of multinational firms’ location choices in 52 EU region...

Time and value are related concepts that influence human behaviour. Although classical topics in human thinking throughout the ages, few environmental economic non-market valuation studies have attempted to link the two concepts. Economists have estimated non-market environmental values in monetary terms for over 30 years. This history of valuation...

Recent developments in the schooling returns literature have focused on exploiting alternative instruments. A number of instruments are available in an Irish dataset, including parental background variables (social class and educational attainment), and variables measuring changes in the schooling system (the introduction of free secondary schoolin...

Time and value are related concepts that influence human behaviour. Although classical topics in human thinking throughout the ages, few environmental economic non-market valuation studies have attempted to link the two concepts. Economists have estimated non-market environmental values in monetary terms for over 30 years. This history of valuation...

This research is concerned with the skills-match between researchers' Ph.D. training and their subsequent university employment. Self-rated skills-matching is considered in light of the anchoring vignettes technique. This technique is used to adress comparability issues in survey research. It has been documented that individuals with more education...

This paper addresses the intergenerational transmission of education and investigates the extent to which early school leaving (at age 16) may be due to variations in parental background. An important contribution of the paper is to distinguish between the causal effects of parental income and parental education levels. Least squares estimation rev...