A major factor affecting students’ academic performance is the classroom environment, in which class size plays an important role. This study aims to test the impact of class-size reduction on students’ performance and examine other factors affecting it. The results are established using a simple model that determines the impact of class size, individuals’ earnestness toward studying, and individuals’ learning environments on students’ performance. The results reveal the benefits of class-size reduction and how elementary students benefited from the smaller class size. This study will help school managers, teachers, and society understand the importance of creating an optimal learning environment based on students’ needs.

As demonstrated by human capital theory, accumulation of human capital through receiving education can increase individual incomes and may enable people to escape from poverty. However, education systems proposed by a utilitarian government exclude some individuals who cannot receive advanced education as a means of alleviating poverty. Moreover, such education systems usually expand income disparity between individuals who receive advanced education and those who do not. This study focuses on a possible situation in which education systems simultaneously enable poverty decline, correct income disparity, and maximize social welfare based on Bentham that is adopted by a utilitarian government. We then clarify a mechanism through which supporting and developing the individual educational environment can increase the quality of basic education and incomes of the poor even if they cannot receive advanced education.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework for a poverty-alleviation program with quasi-public goods and presents four main effects. First, this policy succeeds in self-selection, which identifies low-productive persons under imperfect information and allows them to receive at least the minimum income. Second, we can observe income redistribution by this scheme without any taxes. Third, the program contributes cost-effectiveness in many cases. Finally, it makes clear that this policy is suitable, especially in areas where low-income people are concentrated. Copyright 2007 Blackwell Publishing, Inc..

When a government makes cash transfers as a part of a poverty alleviation program, it often faces a screening problem in identifying those individuals who most deserve to be supported financially because individual productivity levels cannot be monitored. Self-selection mechanisms such as inkind transfers have been proven to be able to overcome this screening problem when individual income levels can be observed by the government. However, especially in developing countries, it is also often difficult for the government to observe individual income. In this article, we thus propose a mechanism that enables cash transfers to support deserving individuals, even though individual income levels cannot be monitored. Moreover, the proposed system allows the government to obtain the necessary financial resources by collecting taxation from productive individuals.

No abstract