Results

CEP discussion paper

Revisiting test score forecasts and teacher value-added

We develop a framework for comparing forecasts in teacher value-added models. We apply it to interpret the teacher-switching test of Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff (2014), showing that the teacher-switching coefficient ca...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teachers' leniency: experimental evidence

Two teachers grading the same student can reach very different conclusions? yet little is known about which teacher characteristics drive such disagreement. We investigate this question through a large-scale online exper...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring systematic gaps in teacher judgement: a new approach

We propose a new approach to test for systematic biases in subjective evaluations. We exploit a setting where teachers were required to assign students both grades and rankings within each grade. Comparing students immed...Read more...

Journal article

Review of World Economics:

The changing structure of global value chains and technological change: evidence from the firm-level patent data

This paper explores how changes in the relative position in the Global Value Chains (GVCs) affect firms? innovation activities. The analysis combines matched patent-firm data with information on GVC networks from the OEC...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...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

The importance of student-teacher matching: a multidimensional value-added approach

We propose a framework for value-added models that flexibly characterizes heterogeneous teacher productivity based on multidimensional student characteristics. We show that teacher effectiveness heavily depends on the sp...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

The full returns to higher education in the UK

University education is known to generate significant earnings returns, but its full value may be understated without considering its wider effects on individual wellbeing. This paper estimates the complete lifetime retu...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 occasional paper

Mapping Functions for Wellbeing Measures to Generate WELLBYs for Use in Economic Evaluation

Ideally, outcome measurements for interventions that affect wellbeing would report the standard, ONS recommended, life satisfaction question. Responses to this question directly correspond to WELLBYs, which can be moneti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willingness to pay for workplace amenities

We develop a revealed preference approach to measure the value of workplace amenities by analyzing how variation in non-wage job attributes affects excess mass in the earnings distribution at budget discontinuities. The ...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

The C-WELLBY: Towards a Universal Measure of Children's Wellbeing for Policy Analysis

There is a pressing need for a universal measure of children's wellbeing, parallel to the WELLBY, for use in cost-benefit analysis. Currently, there is no consensus on how to value the wellbeing of children, raising conc...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...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

VAT pass-through and competition: evidence from the Greek islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes i...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Teacher value-added and gender gaps in educational outcomes

This paper uses rich administrative data from Chile to estimate teacher value added (TVA) on test scores and on an educational attainment index. We allow each teacher to have a different TVA for male and female students ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teacher value-added and gender gaps in educational outcomes

This paper uses rich administrative data from Chile to estimate teacher value added (TVA) on test scores and on an educational attainment index. We allow each teacher to have a different TVA for male and female students ...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Global production networks meets evolutionary economic geography

Two of the canonical approaches in regional studies are global production networks (GPNs) and evolutionary economic geography (EEG). Recent geopolitical and economic events have shown the importance of both theories in e...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How much is your time worth?

Wages indicate how much people want for their time at work, but how can we find out what value they place on time spent doing other things? Christian Krekel and George MacKerron analyse over two million responses to a sm...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Geopolitics and the electric vehicle revolution

Rising demand for electric vehicles (EVs) is changing the geopolitical landscape, as the world pivots away from fossil fuels towards the green minerals critical to the EV supply chain. Benjamin Jones, Viet Nguyen-Tien, R...Read more...

Blog

Trade Talks:

Did responsible sourcing by multinationals help workers in poor countries? (podcast)

A series of industrial accidents that killed workers in the supply chains of multinational corporations triggered backlash by Western consumers. In response, many global companies committed to treat workers in poor count...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Back to Edgeworth? Estimating the value of time using hedonic experiences

Following early economist Francis Y. Edgeworth's proposal to measure people's hedonic experiences as they go about their daily lives, we use a smartphone app that surveyed a panel of 30; 928 individuals UK-wide over seve...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

VAT pass-through and competition: evidence from the Greek Islands

We examine how competition affects VAT pass-through in isolated oligopolistic markets as defined by the Greek islands. Using daily gasoline prices and a difference-in-differences methodology, we investigate how changes i...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The local labor market effects of modern manufacturing capital: evidence from France

Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation te...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

Global value chains and domestic innovation

This paper explores how changes in both position and participation in Global Value Chain (GVC) networks affect firm innovation. The analysis combines matched patent-firm data for Japan with measures of GVC network centra...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...

Journal article

The World Economy:

The electric vehicle revolution: critical material supply chains, trade and development

The emergence of a mass market for electric vehicles (EVs) offers development opportunities for countries that have abundant resources of cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper, aluminium and manganese. Not surprisingly, develo...Read more...

Blog

Vox Dev:

Responsible sourcing? Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

The authors investigate whether responsible sourcing policies implemented by multinational enterprises for their suppliers have impacts on the ground and, if they do, what these mean for firms and workers in the host cou...Read more...

Journal article

Strategy Science:

Local value chains in European MNEs

Ghemawat's work in international business strategy demonstrates that Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) create value both by overcoming and by exploiting the price differences that exist at country borders. This paper eval...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...

CEP discussion paper

Technology transfer in global value chains

Firm-to-firm relationships in global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and in-put production tech...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Learning from praise: evidence from a field experiment with teachers

Financial incentive programs for teachers are increasingly common, but little is known about the effectiveness of non-monetary incentives in improving educational outcomes. This field experiment measures how repeated pub...Read more...

Journal article

China Economic Review:

Compensating for academic loss: online learning and student performance during the Covid-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread school shutdowns, with many continuing distance education via online-learning platforms. We here estimate the causal effects of online education on student exam performance usi...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Service offshoring and export experience

Trade in services is important but difficult to measure. This column introduces a new dataset that helps understand the contribution of services to global value chains and their role in the process of exporting goods. Fi...Read more...

Journal article

Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Misallocation in the market for inputs: enforcement and the organization of production

The strength of contract enforcement determines how firms source inputs and organize production. Using microdata on Indian manufacturing plants, we show that production and sourcing decisions appear systematically distor...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Closing the Gap Between Vocational and General Education? Evidence from University Technical Colleges in England

Some countries, notably those which have long had a weak history of vocational education like the UK and the US, have recently seen a rapid expansion of hybrid schools which provide both general and vocational education....Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Regional differences in UK transport BCRs: an empirical assessment

The UK government uses a Value for Money (VfM) framework to help allocate infrastructure expenditure. At the core of this framework is a benefit to cost ratio (BCR) that is calculated using a set of established monetised...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Growing like China: firm performance and global production line position

Global value chains have fundamentally transformed international trade and development in recent decades. We use matched firm-level customs and manufacturing survey data, together with Input-Output tables for China, to e...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

What is the meaning of (statistical) life? Benefit-cost analysis in the time of Covid-19

Efforts to support public policy decisions need to be conducted carefully and thoughtfully. Recent efforts to estimate the social benefits of reductions in mortality risks associated with COVID-19 interventions are likel...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Better together? Heterogeneous effects of tracking on student achievement

I study the effects of early between-school ability tracking on student achievement, exploiting institutional differences between German federal states. In all states, about 40% of students transition to separate academi...Read more...

Journal article

European Journal of Finance:

Is firm-level clean or dirty innovation valued more?

We examine how Tobin's Q is linked to 'clean' and 'dirty' innovation and innovation efficiency at the firm level. Clean innovation relates to patented technologies in areas such as renewable energy generation and electri...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

Managing global production: theory and evidence from just-in-time supply chains

Global value chains are highly fragmented across countries and dominated by a few large multinational firms. But the challenges of an increasingly difficult international business environment are raising the question of ...Read more...

Journal article

Education Policy Analysis Archives:

Using global observation protocols to inform research on teaching effectiveness and school improvement: strengths and emerging limitations

An essential feature of many modern teacher observation protocols is their ?global? approach to measuring instruction. Global protocols provide a summary evaluation of multiple domains of instruction from observers? over...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring and explaining management in schools: new approaches using public data

Why do some students learn more in some schools than others? One consideration receiving growing attention is school management. To study this, researchers need to be able to measure school management accurately and chea...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The economic effects of density: a synthesis

This paper synthesises the state of knowledge on the economic effects of density. We consider 347 estimates of density elasticities of a broad range of outcomes ranging from wages, innovation, rents, various amenities, t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International buyers' sourcing and suppliers' markups in Bangladeshi garments

Large international buyers play a key role in global value chains. We exploit detailed transaction-level data on the usage of material inputs to study how Bangladeshi garment suppliers' markups vary across international ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Tall buildings and land values: height and construction cost elasticities in Chicago, 1870-2010

Despite unprecedented vertical growth in large cities, the economics of skyscrapers remain understudied. We combine data on tall buildings with a panel of land prices covering 140 years to analyze the determinants of urb...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teacher effectiveness and classroom composition

This paper studies how the effectiveness of teachers varies by classroom composition, combining random assignment of teachers with rich measures of teaching practices based on a popular teacher-evaluation protocol. We fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Misallocation in the market for inputs: enforcement and the organization of production

The strength of contract enforcement determines how firms source inputs and organize production. Using microdata on Indian manufacturing plants, we show that production and sourcing decisions appear systematically distor...Read more...

Journal article

Social Science and Medicine:

Life satisfaction, QALYs, and the monetary value of health

The monetary value of a quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) is frequently used to assess the benefits of health interventions and inform funding decisions. However, there is little consensus on methods for the estimation o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Internalizing global value chains: a firm-level analysis

In recent decades, advances in information and communication technology and falling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domestic economies only a subset of their production stages...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The hospital as a multi-product firm: the effect of hospital competition on value-added indicators of clinical quality

There is increasing international interest in using Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to assess health care provider performance. PROMs are a fundamental advance on existing indicators of health care quality in t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Teacher quality, test scores and non-cognitive skills: evidence from primary school teachers in the UK

Schooling can produce both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, both of which are important determinants of adult outcomes. Using very rich data from a UK birth cohort study, I estimate teacher value added (VA) models for...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Does teacher turnover affect young people's academic achievement?

Do educational results suffer in schools where there is a high turnover among the teaching staff? Shqiponja Telhaj and colleagues explore this question by analysing data from all state secondary schools in England....Read more...

Journal article

Psychological Science:

Models of affective decision making: how do feelings predict choice?

Intuitively, how you feel about potential outcomes will determine your decisions. Indeed, an implicit assumption in one of the most influential theories in psychology, prospect theory, is that feelings govern choice. Sur...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

How firms export: processing vs. ordinary trade with financial frictions

The fragmentation of production across borders allows firms to make and export final goods, or to perform only intermediate stages of production by processing imported inputs for re-exporting. We examine how financial fr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Models of affective decision-making: how do feelings predict choice?

Intuitively, how we feel about potential outcomes will determine our decisions. Indeed, one of the most influential theories in psychology, Prospect Theory, implicitly assumes that feelings govern choice. Surprisingly, h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Minimum wages and firm value

How does the value of a firm change in response to a minimum wage hike? The evidence we have to date is not well-suited to answer this question, principally because events that have been studied are not completely unknow...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How firms export: processing vs. ordinary trade with financial frictions

The fragmentation of production across borders allows firms to make and export final goods, or to perform only intermediate stages of production by processing imported inputs for re-exporting. We examine how financial fr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Intrafirm trade and vertical fragmentation in US multinational corporations

Using firm-level data, we document two new facts regarding intrafirm trade and the activities of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational corporations. First, intrafirm trade is concentrated among a small number of l...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Vertical City: The Price of Land and the Height of Buildings in Chicago 1870-2010

We analyze the determinants of building heights in Chicago by combining a micro-geographic data set on tall buildings with a unique panel of land prices covering 140 years. Consistent with the predictions of classic urba...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Monopolistic competition and optimum product selection

We provide novel insights on the decentralization of optimal outcomes under monopolistic competition with nonseparable utility, variable demand elasticity, and endogenous firm heterogeneity. Relative to the unconstrained...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

No Escape? The Co-ordination Problem in Heritage Preservation

Conservation areas (CAs) are among the most restrictive English planning policies. Designation implies a significant limitation of owners? control over the shape and appearance of their properties. The policy, however, c...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Game of Zones: The Economics of Conservation Areas

Provided there are positive external benefits attached to the historic character of buildings, owners of properties in designated conservation areas benefit from a reduction in uncertainty regarding the future of their a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Global Value Chains During the Great Trade Collapse: A Bullwhip Effect?

This paper analyzes the performance of global value chains during the trade collapse. To do so, it exploits a unique transaction-level dataset on French firms containing information on cross-border monthly transactions m...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Students? Perceptions of Teacher Biases: Experimental Economics in Schools

We put forward a new experimental economics design with monetary incentives to estimate students? perceptions of grading discrimination. We use this design in a large field experiment which involved 1,200 British student...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Unequal Britain: how real are regional disparities?

Average earnings vary widely across the regions of Britain, a fact that has prompted many decades of policies aimed at reducing regional disparities. But as Henry Overman and Steve Gibbons demonstrate, such variation rev...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Teachers' pay and pupil performance

If you pay peanuts, do you get monkeys? If teachers were better paid and higher up the national income distribution, would there be an improvement in pupil performance? Peter Dolton and Oscar Marcenaro-Gutierrez examine ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Amenity Value of English Nature: A Hedonic Price Approach

Using a hedonic property value price approach, we estimate the amenity value associated with proximity to habitats, designated areas, domestic gardens and other natural amenities in England. There is a long tradition of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Interrelationship between HR, Strategy and Profitability in Service SMEs: Empirical Evidence from the UK Tourism Hospitality and Leisure Sector

We investigate the strategies, HR attributes and their synergies that are associated with superior performance in service SMEs using data from the UK Tourism Hospitality and Leisure (THL) sector. A major advantage of our...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Individual Teacher Incentives, Student Achievement and Grade Inflation

Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Strategic Patenting and Software Innovation

Strategic patenting is widely believed to raise the costs of innovating, especially in industries characterised by cumulative innovation. This paper studies the effects of strategic patenting on R&D, patenting and market...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Knowledge Flow and Sequential Innovation: Implications for Technology Diffusion, R&D and Market Value

It is shown that spillovers can enhance private returns to innovation if they feed back into the dynamic research of the original inventor (Internalized spillovers), but will always reduce private returns, if the origina...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Identifying Technology Spillovers and Product Market Rivalry

The impact of R&D on growth through spillovers has been a major topic of economic research over the last thirty years. A central problem in the literature is that firm performance is affected by two countervailing ?spill...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Collateral Value and Forbearance Lending

We investigate the foreclosure policy of collateral-based loans in which the endogenous collateral value plays a crucial role. If creditors are able to commit, then the equilibrium arrangement is more likely to feature f...Read more...