This article uses a logistic probability distribution approach to examine the effect of lecture attendance, aptitude test results, individual heterogeneity and pedagogic intervention on student performance for first-year microeconomics and second-year macroeconomics modules at a leading South African university. The research was motivated by the…

Through the use of event-history techniques, we will show that a duration framework is adapted to the analysis of higher education attrition. Our dropout model allows for estimates to vary over time. While some factors exhibit constant effects, like high school characteristics, other effects do vary from the first year to the fourth. Men and women…

The existence of an inverse relationship between wage levels and regional unemployment rates, commonly referred to as the wage curve, is well established in the economic literature and was described by Card (1995) as being "close to an empirical law of economics". This microeconomic wage-unemployment relationship, first identified by…

This paper reviews some of the most popular policy evaluation methods in empirical microeconomics: social experiments, natural experiments, matching, instrumental variables, discontinuity design, and control functions. It discusses identification of traditionally used average parameters and more complex distributional parameters. The adequacy,…

The in house development of an online assessment tool, OASIS, has provided a unique opportunity to research the use of online assessment in teaching and learning across the university. The developing relationship between IT staff, educational designers and academics serves as a model for integrated and evolving management systems which demonstrate…