In addition to the most pressing issues of the day, scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies focus their research on many regions of the world, from Beijing to Brazil.
Research Spotlight
The Ripple Effects of China’s College Expansion on American Universities
Researchers at SCCEI trace how China’s unprecedented expansion of higher education has impacted U.S. graduate education and local economies surrounding college towns.
While Nayib Bukele's style of authoritarianism may have some successes on paper, Beatriz Magaloni and Alberto Diaz-Cayeros argue that the regime is headed for a reckoning.
Time for Iran to Make a No-enrichment Nuclear Deal
The time has come for Iran’s leaders to reconsider their past intransigent, deceptive posture and instead pursue a nuclear power program that will benefit the Iranian people, write Abbas Milani and Siegfried Hecker.
Economic Development and Cultural Change,
March 15, 2024
We study how an elite college education affects social mobility in China. China provides an interesting context because its college admissions rely mainly on the scores of a centralized exam, a system that has been the subject of intense debate. Combining the data from a large-scale college graduate survey and a nationally representative household survey, we document three main findings.First, attending an elite college can change one’s fate to some extent. It raises the child’s rank in the income distribution by almost 20 percentiles. Nevertheless, it does not change the intergenerational relationship in income ranks or guarantee one’s entry into an elite occupation or industry. Second, while elite college access rises with parental income, the disparity is less pronounced in China than in the United States. In China, top-quintile children are 2.3 times more likely to attend an elite college compared to bottom-quintile children, versus an 11.2-fold difference in the U.S. Third, the score-based cutoff rule in elite college admission is income neutral. Overall, these findings reveal both the efficacy and limitations of China’s elite colleges in shaping social mobility.
As government agencies move to adopt AI across a range of programs, choices made in system design can ensure individuals’ ability to effectively challenge decisions made about them.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
February 20, 2024
From Mesopotamian cities to industrialized nations, gossip has been at the center of bonding human groups. Yet the evolution of gossip remains a puzzle. The current article argues that gossip evolves because its dissemination of individuals’ reputations induces individuals to cooperate with those who gossip. As a result, gossipers proliferate as well as sustain the reputation system and cooperation.
Uncritically equating acute nuclear attack effects and AI threats risks reproducing the same kind of all-or-nothing thinking that drove some of the most dangerous dynamics of the nuclear arms race.
A proposed system intended to respond to the criticism that software security is context dependent, to minimize the cost of litigation, and to incentivize improvements in software security.
Despite the proliferation of education technologies (EdTech) in education, past reviews that examine their effectiveness in the context of low- and middle-income countries are few and rarely seek to include studies published in languages other than English. This systematic review investigates the effectiveness of educational technology on primary and secondary student learning outcomes in China via a systematic search of both English- and Chinese-language databases. Eighteen (18) unique studies in 21 manuscripts on the effectiveness of EdTech innovations in China met the eligibility criteria. The majority of these evaluate computer aided self-led learning software packages designed to improve student learning (computer assisted learning, CAL), while the rest evaluate the use of education technology to improve classroom instruction (ICI) and remote instruction (RI). The pooled effect size of all included studies indicates a small, positive effect on student learning (0.13 SD, 95% CI [0.10, 0.17]). CAL used a supplement to existing educational inputs – which made up the large majority of positive effect sizes – and RI programs consistently showed positive and significant effects on learning. Our findings indicate no significant differences or impacts on the overall effect based on moderating variables such as the type of implementation approach, contextual setting, or school subject area. Taken together, while there is evidence of the positive impacts of two kinds of EdTech (supplemental computer assisted learning and remote instruction) in China, more evidence is needed to determine the effectiveness of other approaches.
