Results

CEP discussion paper

Brief yet effective: group counseling and college access for disadvantaged students

Large socioeconomic gaps in higher-education access and completion persist even among similarly talented students with access to generous funding, pointing to an important role for information frictions and unequal suppo...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Youth crime and delinquency in and out of school

Ten years of idiosyncratic variation in school closure dates for all secondary schools in England are combined with administrative records of educational and criminal trajectories linked at the individual level to study ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

When Ofsted downgrades schools, headteachers pay the price

A high-risk, low-reward system affects the supply of teachers...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Wellbeing appraisal for Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Underpinning evidence and assumptions

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) are a series of measures to reduce traffic volumes and increase active modes of travel in residential areas. They typically restrict cars from certain streets and can include bollards or...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Elite universities and the intergenerational transmission of human and social capital

Do elite colleges help talented students join the social elite or help incumbent elites retain their positions? We combine intergenerationally linked data from Chile with a regression discontinuity design to show that, l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

From pilot to policy: experimental evidence from scaling online tutoring

Can effective tutoring programs survive the transition from pilot to scale, and from researcher to government implementers? We address this question using a randomized controlled trial of an online mathematics tutoring p...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The complex relationship between education and criminal activity

Reducing crime starts with both school attendance and conflict resolution...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Degrees of choice

Bolder applications mean that private school pupils end up at better universities than their exam results predict...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The impact of subjective school ratings on principal compensation and turnover

Prior research has established that objective, test-score-based school accountability measures impact school leaders. Subjective evaluations, on the other hand, can provide a more nuanced assessment of school quality. Th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Adoption, incidence and welfare impacts of interest-free loans: evidence from solar PV

Steep declines in solar PV costs raises questions about whether, and how, to continue support. We leverage administrative microdata on the near-universe of UK domestic PV and a matched difference-in-differences design ex...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Free to improve? The impact of free school attendance in England

We evaluate the impact of attending two secondary free schools in England - new autonomous state-funded start-ups - using admission lotteries and a distance-based regression discontinuity design. We characterise each sch...Read more...

Journal article

Italian Economic Journal:

Artificial intelligence in education: computer-assisted learning and AI-guided tutors

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL) offer powerful tools to improve foundational skills and close educational gaps, with evidence showing meaningful gains in student performance, especially ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Personnel policy in public sector organizations: evidence from England's academy schools

Many governments are increasingly decentralizing the governance of public sector organizations, by granting more autonomy to their managers. At the same time, public sector managers often cannot use key personnel practic...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Structured wellbeing curriculum in schools

Some argue that school is a means to an end, and time spent in lessons may be unpleasant, but it helps these children in the future. The question is 'to what end'. Are school years something which have to be tolerated i...Read more...

Blog

World Bank Blogs:

Learning amid disruption: a feasible, effective, and scalable investment in education during wartime

Wars devastate infrastructure and institutions, but their most profound costs are often borne by human capital. Education systems are among the first casualties of conflict: schools are destroyed, and families are displa...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

What can we learn about youth crime from weekday school closures?

Schools are lauded for their ability to keep young people away from crime and on the right path. But what happens behind the school gates? Janine Boshoff and Matteo Sandi reveal a more complex story - one where schoolyar...Read more...

CEP policy analysis

How do you measure a child's wellbeing? (policy brief)

A central question for policy evaluation in the UK is how to measure wellbeing. To address this, wellbeing years (WELLBYs) were developed at the London School of Economics to assign social and economic value to changes i...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

What's at stake for teenagers in England awaiting their GCSE results?

The 16-year-olds who took their GCSEs this summer started secondary school in the middle of the pandemic. The results of these high-stakes exams will highlight the uneven toll that Covid-19 lockdowns took on learning, as...Read more...

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...

Blog

LSE Inequalities:

How does housing affect educational outcomes? Evidence from the UK's Right to Buy scheme

Right-to-Buy gave tenants of local authority owned 'council' houses the chance to own their home. The policy, which began in 1980, has been criticised for increasing inequality in the housing market, but Richard Disney a...Read more...

CEP report

Pupil absence and the Covid-19 pandemic

A high level of school absence has persisted across many countries since the Covid-19 pandemic. We use English data to investigate how local health and social regulations affected pupil absence rates during the pandemic ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

Closing the gap between vocational and general education?

Vocational education delivery is widely debated, with ongoing efforts to improve its effectiveness. In 2010, England introduced University Technical Colleges (UTCs), hybrid institutions combining general and vocational e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Public sector performance disclosure: salary and career outcomes for top managers and employees

Public sector organizations around the world are held to account on the basis of objective measures of performance. This paper investigates, for the first time, the impact of subjective school inspection ratings on labor...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Youth crime and delinquency in and out of school

This paper combines ten years of idiosyncratic variation in school closure dates for all secondary schools in England with administrative records of educational and criminal trajectories linked at the individual level to...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The benefits of elite education are more social than academic

From Oxbridge to Harvard and Yale, elite universities are a feature of many education systems. Andres Barrios Fernandez, Christopher Neilson and Seth Zimmerman write about the importance of the social circles created by ...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

De-tracking at the margin: How alternative secondary education pathways affect student attainment

This paper estimates how marginal increases in the flexibility of between-school tracking affect student attainment by exploiting the addition of non-selective `comprehensive schools? and hybrid `vocational high schools?...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education: An Introductory Textbook:

Gender gaps in education

International data stubbornly show that boys perform worse than girls in school and that women continue to be under-represented in university and professional careers related to STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Eng...Read more...

Journal article

Review of International Economics:

Political competition and the strategic adoption of free trade agreements

I study how political competition affects the feasibility of free trade agreements (FTAs). I show that the possibility of political turnover creates strategic motivations for the formation of FTAs. Specifically, a govern...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Political competition and the strategic adoption of free trade agreements

I study how political competition affects the feasibility of free trade agreements (FTAs). I show that the possibility of political turnover creates strategic motivations for the formation of FTAs. Specifically, a govern...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Spending public money to create happier lives

Choosing policies that most improve wellbeing would radically change government priorities. David Frayman, Christian Krekel, Richard Layard, Sara MacLennan and Isaac Parkes explain the science behind the new approach....Read more...

Government consultation

Industry and Regulators Committee

I am an economist who has worked (on and off) on post-school education for many years. From 1961-64 I was senior Research Officer to the Robbins Committee. In 1994 I co-edited Britain's Training Deficit. From 1997-2001 I...Read more...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Absence rates will stay high until the Covid generation leaves school

School absences increased massively during the Covid-19 pandemic and remain at higher levels. Our new research (funded by the Nuffield Foundation) shows that the high level of pupil absence in England can be attributed t...Read more...

CEP report

Pupil absence and the pandemic

This report investigates lost education time during the COVID-19 pandemic in England. We look at the general factors affecting rates of absence during different stages of the pandemic and the consequences of specific pol...Read more...

CEP report

Overview: The pandemic, pupil attendance and achievement

School absences increased massively during the Covid-19 pandemic and remain high internationally. We investigate whether policy variation in restrictions influenced pupil absence during the pandemic and how this affected...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Trade, gravity and aggregation

Gravity equations are an important tool in empirical international trade research. We study to what extent sector-level parameters can be recovered from aggregate gravity equations estimated via Poisson pseudo maximum li...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Mental health support teams in schools: Evidence and assumptions

In this paper we examine the cost-effectiveness of providing NICE recommended psychological therapy to young people. For each type of mental health problem we show: (i) the assumptions used to derive the impact of treati...Read more...

CEP report

Value for money: How to improve wellbeing and reduce misery

The government spends billions on our behalf. How do we want this money to be spent? This report reviews a range of policies and asks the fundamental question which should be asked of every policy: Does it deliver value ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The educational choices of British 16-year-olds matter for the economy

The choices that British 16-year-olds are making in the next few weeks about their future studies matter not just for them and their families but also for the nation's economy. Britain needs a workforce with graduate-le...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Open Economics:

Education inequalities

Education is one of the most important predictors of people's life chances, shaping outcomes like work and pay, health, and wealth. Explaining inequalities in educational outcomes, as well as how wider outcomes vary by e...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Schools

Schools in England, and the UK as a whole, need greater investment. Failure to do so puts economic growth in jeopardy as well as worsening social mobility....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Online tutoring can transform education for disadvantaged youngsters

Online tutoring can transform education for disadvantaged youngsters Online tutoring has emerged as an effective strategy for narrowing the educational gaps that were exacerbated by the pandemic. Lucas Gortazar, Claudia ...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

University degrees: how should we assess their value?

Evaluating university degrees on the basis of the job prospects they provide for graduates has led to some being seen as 'low value' or 'low quality'. But, in reality, their worth is hard to measure. Closing such courses...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How could the UK's education system be reformed to equalise opportunities?

Nine out of ten respondents to a recent UK poll by More in Common for the Sutton Trust agreed that it is important for young people to have equal opportunities, regardless of their background. While recent YouGov pollin...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

An "army of people" investigating how to make work and life more enjoyable

Wellbeing science can help revolutionise government, work, school and life. Schools shouldn't train people only for work, and work should be enjoyable. People are now studying how to make this happen, because the well-be...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The organizational economics of school chains

We use the insights of firms' organizational economics to study school chains' organization. We match information on decentralization of activities for approximately 400 chains and 2,000 schools in England to student and...Read more...

External report

A generation at risk: rebalancing education in the post-pandemic era

We present for the first time a model of children's evolving socio-emotional and cognitive skills to assess how the educational and lifetime prospects of children of different ages, genders and socio-economic backgrounds...Read more...

External report

Labour Economics: Thinking through Labour's economic agenda

With the Labour Party having vowed to achieve the fastest growth in the G7, the Social Market Foundation has brought together leading economic experts to provide independent analysis of the party's proposed approach - an...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Intergenerational income mobility in France: A comparative and geographic analysis

The question of the extent to which individuals' incomes are related to those of their parents has seen renewed interest as rising income inequality raises concerns about equality of opportunity. Gustave Kenedi and Louis...Read more...

Blog

LSE Inequalities:

The spiralling costs of higher education are hitting stay at home students harder

Since the pandemic, a new divide has emerged in higher education between commuter students, on the one hand, and on-campus students, on the other. Reporting on the findings of a new student money and wellbeing survey, Le...Read more...

Blog

LSE EUROPP:

Online tutoring can transform education for disadvantaged students

Online tutoring programmes have emerged as an effective strategy for narrowing the educational gaps that were exacerbated by the pandemic. Claudia Hupkau, Lucas Gortazar and Antonio Roldan-Mones outline how an eight-week...Read more...

Blog

Wonkhe:

The spiralling costs of higher education are hitting stay at home students harder

Commuter students face financial struggle and a growing sense of isolation from campus. Lee Elliot Major introduces the findings of a new student money and wellbeing survey....Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Do publicly funded autonomous schools improve education systems in the world?

In recent decades, many countries have established autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools. Natalie Irmert, Jan Bietenbeck, Linn Mattisson and Felix We...Read more...

External report

The state of the UK economy 2024

The state of the UK economy is always an important matter, but it is all the more so in what looks likely to be an election year. This UK in a Changing Europe report takes stock of the UK economy in order to assess how i...Read more...

Blog

Higher Education Policy Institute:

Confronting higher education's class divide

Lee Elliot Major explains why developing an equity approach in higher education is the only way we will ever level the learning playing field - and lays out three simple steps we can take to achieve this....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Autonomous schools, achievement and segregation

We study whether autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools, affect student achievement and school segregation across 15 countries over 16 years. Our trip...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics :

Class rank and long-run outcomes

This paper considers an unavoidable feature of the school environment, class rank. What are the long-run effects of a student's ordinal rank in elementary school? Using administrative data on all public-school students i...Read more...

Blog

South-West Social Mobility Commission's Substack:

Fixing a broken tongue

Lee Elliot Major explains why the language we use in education is important to challenge the divides that scar the education system....Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How does compulsory school attendance affect youth violence?

Keeping young people in education can provide them with protection from crime as well as limiting opportunities for them to engage in criminal activities. But a policy of raising the age of compulsory attendance may also...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Youth custody: who ends up there and how does it affect their later lives?

There are severe long-term consequences for young people in the UK who spend time in youth custody, the majority of whom are boys. Those with very low grades, in special education facilities and with additional education...Read more...

Book

Handbook of the Economics of Education
Volume 7

Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume Seven describes the research frontier in key topical areas and sets the agenda for further work. Sections in this new release include Methods for Measuring School Effectiven...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The rising tide of school absences in the post-pandemic era

New research reveals that school attendance in the UK is still well below the pre-pandemic norm. Andrew Eyles, Esme Lillywhite and Lee Elliot Major outline the scale of continued absenteeism among pupils across the count...Read more...

Book

Equity in education: Levelling the playing field of learning - a practical guide for teachers

Equity in Education sets out a new equity-based approach in education to help teachers improve the prospects of under-resourced and working-class pupils. The equity approach recognises that we must address our own cultu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Free to improve? The impact of free school attendance in England

We investigate the impact of attending a free school in England - that is, a new start-up school that enjoys considerable autonomy while remaining in the state sector. We analyse the effects of two secondary free schools...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Uncovering the association between school qualifications and youth custody

Youth custody has severe long-term consequences for detained young people. Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela investigate the relationship between GCSE qualifications and youth custody, and find t...Read more...

Blog

FE News:

The childcare revolution: a new opportunity for parental partnerships in child learning

Lee Elliot Major discusses how teacher-parent partnerships can help make the UK's childcare system more effective and provides three policy recommendations the government can implement....Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The rising tide of school absences in the post-pandemic era

While many presumed school attendance levels would recover rapidly from the impact of the pandemic, new research reveals the scale of continued absenteeism among school pupils across the country. Andrew Eyles, Esme Lilly...Read more...

Blog

LSE EUROPP:

What girls study at school affects how healthy their babies will be later in life

Education plays a crucial role in shaping the future of individuals and societies. Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz, Cristina Borra and Almudena Sevilla present findings from research on the long-term health effects of a comprehensive ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

School qualifications and youth custody

Youth custody has severe long-term consequences for detained young people. Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela investigate the relationship between GCSE qualifications and youth custody, and find t...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Which educational policies are most effective for equalising opportunities?

Against a backdrop of poor productivity growth, severe skill shortages and increasing educational inequalities in the UK since the pandemic, investment in education and skills is essential. It requires policies that span...Read more...

Blog

LSE EUROPP:

Female students perform better when taught by female lecturers - but class size is key

Stephan Maurer, Guido Schwerdt and Simon Wiederhold find a positive impact from female lecturers on female educational performance. But this effect exists when class sizes are small, suggesting that it is direct and freq...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Online tutoring works: experimental evidence from a program with vulnerable children

We provide evidence from a randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of a novel, 100-percent online math tutoring program, targeted at secondary school students from highly disadvantaged neighborhoods. The intensi...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

How women are changing the face of economics

Economics continues to be a discipline dominated by men. Yet trailblazing female economists are working to change that. Myung Jin explains why it is important to improve diversity and equality within the field....Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The paradox of vocational education

Despite a UK labour market that is hungry for skills, academic education has triumphed over training, apprenticeships and preparation for specific occupations. Alison Wolf looks at why vocational education continues to l...Read more...

Book

Handbook of the Economics of Education
Volume 6

The Handbook of the Economics of Education describes the research frontier in key topical areas and sets the agenda for further work. Modern analysis in the economics of education has made tremendous strides in understan...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

School qualifications and youth custody

A very small number of young people enter youth custody between age 16 and 18 (about 4 in 1000 males), yet the consequences are severe. They spend an average of 7 months in youth custody and such incarceration has been r...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Lost boys? Secondary education and crime

We study the effect of secondary education on criminal behavior of young men in Finland. We exploit admission cut-offs in over-subscribed programs and estimate the effect of gaining access to a) any secondary school vs n...Read more...

Chapter

Educational inequality

in Handbook of the economics of education

This chapter provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on the causes and consequences of unequal education. We document large achievement gaps between children from different socioeconomi...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Unequal education and the 'Great Gatsby Curve'

In modern economies, people's livelihoods are based in large part on skills acquired through education. Unequal education therefore drives both inequality in the labour market and low social mobility across generations. ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender stereotypes in the family

We investigate gender-stereotyped beliefs about children's academic abilities among parents. Leveraging survey and school administrative data, we document that parents underestimate girls' mathematical skills and overest...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

The Recent Evolution of Apprenticeships

While the number of apprenticeship starts in England has reduced dramatically in recent years, policy changes have likely improved their average quality. Chiara Cavaglia, Sandra McNally and Gu Ventura discuss the evoluti...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Teacher effectiveness and classroom composition: understanding match effects in the classroom

This paper provides evidence of match effects in the teacher labour market by considering how teacher effectiveness varies by classroom composition. We combine random assignment of teachers with rich measures of teaching...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Can grit be taught? Lessons from a nationwide field experiment with middle-school students

We study whether a particular socio-emotional skill - grit (the ability to sustain effort and interest towards long-term goals) - can be cultivated through a large-scale program, and how this affects student learning. Us...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Rising school absences: the post pandemic education divide

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the equalising power of schooling. Over 28% of primary and 40% of secondary school pupils who qualified for free school meals were persistently absent during the 2021/22 autumn term....Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Capital:

Teachers and the gender gap in reading achievement

Boys persistently lag behind girls in English/language arts. We find that heterogeneity in teachersa?? relative boy-specific value added could explain a large proportion of this gap. We exploit multifaceted measures of e...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

US student debt forgiveness: should the UK follow suit?

A recently announced policy package will ease the burden of student debt for millions of Americans. Richard Murphy, Stuart Campbell, Gill Wyness and Lindsey Macmillan contend that, due to differences between the national...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Intra-bloc tariffs and preferential margins in trade agreements

We study how countries choose intra-bloc tariffs and preferential margins in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). Our model indicates that countries should set systematically lower preferential margins when the bloc tak...Read more...

Blog

UK in a changing Europe:

The Johnson legacy: education

Andrew Eyles explains that while the government's goals in education policy have been ambitious and are to be applauded, the policies in place fall short of the targets set out as part of the broader levelling up agenda....Read more...

External report

Education Inequalities

Education is one of the most important predictors of people's life chances. Better-educated people are more likely to be in work and tend to earn more, and the influence of education does not stop there. Education shapes...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Capital:

Who benefits from attending the higher track? The effect of track assignment on skill development and the role of relative age

Previous findings on (gradually decreasing) relative age effects in school suggest that too few younger and too many older students attend academic tracks. Using a regression discontinuity design around school-specific a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Reducing gender gaps in mathematics education

Girls and young women underperform in mathematics relative to their male peers - a loss of talent that may hinder productivity growth. Almudena Sevilla and Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz explain how new developments in gender economi...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

Economics of Education Review:

Deregulating teacher labor markets

This paper examines how the removal of national pay scales, a common feature of public sector labor markets, affects productivity. We exploit a reform that compelled all schools in England to replace pay scales with scho...Read more...

Blog

The Sutton Trust:

Gloomy prospects for social mobility in the pandemic era

Lee Elliot Major and Andrew Eyles explain how a gap in missed education between richer and poorer children was exacerbated by stark home learning divides and the likely consequences for social mobility....Read more...

External report

Social mobility: past, present and future

Andrew Eyles, Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin forecast that relative income mobility levels in the UK could fall by as much as 12%, driven by learning loss in schools....Read more...

Blog

The Royal Society:

What actually makes us happy?

Professor Lord Richard Layard considers the importance of wellbeing and happiness amongst our young people for their future....Read more...

Journal article

ILR Review:

Schooling and parental labor supply: evidence from Covid-19 school closures in the United States

This article examines changes in parental labor supply in response to the unanticipated closure of schools following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The authors collect detailed daily information...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

What do we know so far about the effect of school closures on educational inequality?

Nearly all schools closed at some point during the pandemic. Reviewing the evidence so far, Jo Blanden, Matthias Doepke and Jan Stuhler warn that these closures will have a major negative impact on educational inequality...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics :

Does evaluation change teacher effort and performance? Quasi-experimental evidence from a policy of retesting students

We document measurable, lasting gains in student achievement caused by a change in teachers' evaluation incentives. A short-lived rule created a discontinuity in teachers' incentives when allocating effort across their a...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Gravity and heterogeneous trade cost elasticities

How do trade costs affect international trade? This paper offers a new approach. We rely on a flexible gravity equation that predicts variable trade cost elasticities, both across and within country pairs. We apply this ...Read more...

Blog

UK in a Changing Europe:

Levelling up education

Andrew Eyles examines the UK's levelling up white paper, explaining how the plans for education may need to go further to be fully effective....Read more...