Results

CEP discussion paper

Private highs: investigating university overmatch among students from elite schools

Inequality in elite college attendance is a key driver of intergenerational mobility. This paper shifts the focus upstream to examine how elite high school attendance - specifically, enrollment in UK private, fee-paying ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources :

Where versus what: college value-added and returns to field of study in further education

We use administrative records on educational and labor market trajectories to estimate the value-added of English further education colleges in terms of educational and labor market outcomes and earnings returns to diffe...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The confidence gap influencing who applies to top colleges and careers

Students' choice of which university and programme to apply to isn't a simple financial decision. There's more at stake in the decision than finance and information gaps. Behavioural constraints play an important role. C...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The effect of feedback on student performance

This study examines the effect of scalable personalized feedback messages from professors on student performance in both synchronous and asynchronous classes, with a specific focus on first-generation students. We conduc...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance:

Labor market returns to higher education

The persistent high wage premium associated with college education, despite increasing participation rates, continues to generate a great deal of academic and policy interest. While it is widely agreed that the financia...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Estimating students' valuation for college experiences

Quantifying the consumption value of college - the utility students derive from in-person instruction and on-campus social activities - has been challenging. We leverage the COVID-19 shock to elicit students' intended li...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Young people's university plans: evidence from German reunification

Around a decade after Germany's reunification, a long-standing educational gap between the east and west of the country - completion of the certificate needed to enter university - had closed. Ghazala Azmat and Katja Kau...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

CEO pay and the rise of relative performance contracts: a question of governance?

We exploit the large rise in relative performance awards in the United Kingdom over the last two decades to investigate whether these contracts improve the alignment between CEO pay and firm performance. We first documen...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance:

The effects of parental job loss on children's outcomes

Severe economic downturns are typically characterized by a high incidence of job losses. The available evidence suggests that job losers suffer short-run earning losses that persist in the long run, are more likely to re...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Formation of college plans: expected returns, preferences and adjustment process

We exploit a large exogenous shock to study the determinants of college attendance and the role played by one's environment. We analyze whether, and how quickly, adolescents' college plans are adapted, explore factors le...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Where versus What: College Value-Added and Returns to Field of Study in Further Education

Enrolling in vocational education and training programs constitutes a natural response to the current dynamics of the labour market, which is being reshaped by routinisation, automation, and outsourcing. We estimate the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

O brother, where start thou? Sibling spillovers on college and major choice in four countries

Family and social networks are widely believed to influence important life decisions but identifying their causal effects is notoriously difficult. Using admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger s...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Mismatched students and universities

Higher education has long been thought of as a tool to equalise opportunities. But according to research by Gill Wyness and colleagues, if we really want to improve the life chances of disadvantaged students, we need to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Inequalities in student to course match: evidence from linked administrative data

This paper examines inequalities in the match between student quality and university quality using linked administrative data from schools, universities and tax authorities. We analyse two measures of match at the univer...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The end of free college in England

A growing movement in the United States is promoting 'free college' for young people. Richard Murphy, Judith Scott Clayton and Gill Wyness ask what can be learned about the likely outcomes from England's move in the oppo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

CEO pay and the rise of relative performance contracts: a question of governance?

Would moving to relative performance contracts improve the alignment between CEO pay and performance? To address this, we exploit the large rise in relative performance awards and the share of equity pay in the UK over ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

University differences in the graduation of minorities in STEM fields: evidence from California

We examine differences in minority science graduation rates among University of California campuses when racial preferences were in place. Less prepared minorities at higher ranked campuses had lower persistence rates in...Read more...

CentrePiece article

What makes consumers switch mobile phone tariffs?

The potential psychological pain of nasty surprises on mobile phone bills is a great motivator to switch tariffs, according to research by Christos Genakos and colleagues. Their study notes that navigating through thousa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Loss aversion on the phone

We analyze consumer switching between mobile tariff plans using consumer-level panel data. Consumers receive reminders from a specialist price-comparison website about the precise amount they could save by switching to a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Affirmative action and university fit: evidence from Proposition 209

Proposition 209 banned the use of racial preferences in admissions at public colleges in California. We analyze unique data for all applicants and enrollees within the University of California (UC) system before and afte...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

University differences in the graduation of minorities in STEM fields: evidence from California

The low number of college graduates with science degrees - particularly among underrepresented minorities - is of growing concern. We examine differences across universities in graduating students in different fields. Us...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Explaining cross-racial differences in the educational gender gap

The sizable gender gap in college enrolment, especially among African Americans, constitutes a puzzling empirical regularity that may have serious consequences on marriage markets, male labor force participation and the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Racial segregation patterns in selective universities

This paper examines sorting into interracial friendships at selective universities. We show significant friendship segregation, particularly for blacks. Indeed, black friendships are no more diverse in college than in hi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

To Join or Not to Join? Factors Influencing Employee Share Plan Membership in a Multinational Corporation

Many firms encourage employees to own company stock through share plans that subsidize the price at favorable rates, but even so many employees do not buy shares. Using a new survey of employees in a multinational with a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Educational Returns, Ability Composition and Cohort Effects: Theory and Evidence for Cohorts of Early-Career UK Graduates

An increase over time in the proportion of young people obtaining a degree is likely to impact on the relative ability compositions (i) of graduates and non-graduates and (ii) across graduates with different classes of d...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Swing-State Theory of Trade Protection in the Electoral College

This paper develops an infinite-horizon, political agency model with a continuum of political districts, in which incumbent politicians can improve their re-election probability by attracting swing voters in key states t...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Overqualification, Job Dissatisfaction and Increasing Dispersion in the Returns to Graduate Education

Increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education is found, using quantile regression. This trend is related to rising overqualification. We distinguish between and validate measures of ?Real? and ?Formal? overq...Read more...