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Previous research has established that undergraduate students in the UK who had attended private schools perform less well at university, on average, than equivalent students who had been educated at a state school prior to university (Smith and Naylor, 2001 and 2005; Crawford, 2014a). This well-known result has provided an evidence base for the use of contextualised offers in admissions across the sector (Schwartz Report, 2004; Hubble and Bolton, 2020) as an instrument for enhancing social mobility. In the current paper, we use a rich dataset for a particular university to examine whether the negative association between private schooling and class of degree awarded holds across all students, independent of ethnicity: we find that it does not. For White students, we obtain the standard result that private schooling is associated negatively with class of degree. However, in stark contrast, among students whose ethnicity is self-reported as either Black, Asian or Mixed Ethnicity, attendance at a private school prior to university is, on average, associated positively with the class of degree awarded. On further exploration, we find this is driven by a strong positive association among Black students and students of Mixed Ethnicity; the overarching category of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnicity conceals substantive differences within the category. Among Asian students, the absence of any association between private schooling and degree class, on average, masks a very strong negative association for those from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds. We discuss and interpret our results in the context of hypotheses within the literatures on schooling effects and on the ethnicity awarding gap in higher education.

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Firms which face the threat of import competition from foreign rivals are conventionally seen as favouring import protection. We show that this is not necessarily the case when domestic firms’ input prices are determined endogenously. In a framework where the input price is determined through bargaining with an (upstream) input supplier, the relationship between a domestic (downstream) firm’s profits and the number of foreign competitors depends on trade costs. If trade costs are sufficiently high, then an increase in the number of foreign entrants can raise the profits of a downstream firm in a home market characterised by Cournot competition. The intuition for this result is that increased product market competition through the entry of foreign firms is mirrored by profit-enhancing moderation of the bargained input price. We examine a number of tariff and non-tariff barriers to international trade and identify conditions under which import-competing firms will favour the removal of barriers to foreign competition.

International audience

International audience

We investigate the extent to which graduate returns vary according to the class of degree achieved by UK university students and examine changes over time in estimated degree class premia. Using a variety of complementary datasets for individuals born in Britain around 1970 and aged between 30 and 40, we estimate an hourly wage premium for a ‘good’ (relative to a ‘lower’) class of degree of 7% to 9%, implying a wide spread around the average graduate premium. We also estimate the premium for a good relative to a lower degree for different cohorts (those born between the mid-1960s and early-1980s) and find evidence that the premium for a good degree has risen over time as the proportions of cohorts participating in higher education have increased.

We show that a firm's profits under Cournot oligopoly can be increasing in the number of firms in the industry if wages are determined by decentralised bargaining in unionised bilateral oligopoly. The intuition for the result is that increased product market competition following an increase in the number of firms is mirrored by increased labour market rivalry which induces (profit-enhancing) wage moderation. Whether the product or labour market effect dominates depends both on the extent of union bargaining power and on the nature of union preferences. An incumbent monopolist will have an incentive to accommodate entry if the labour market effect dominates. We also show that this incentive is stronger if the incumbent anticipates that, post entry, it will be able to act as a Stackelberg leader.

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 degree award. In a signalling framework, we examine the implications of this on biases across cohorts in estimates of educational returns. In an empirical analysis, we exploit administrative data on whole populations of UK university students for ten graduate cohorts to investigate the extent to which early labour market outcomes vary with class of degree awarded. Consistent with our theoretical model, we find that returns by degree class increased across cohorts during a period of substantial graduate expansion. We also corroborate the empirical findings with evidence from complementary data on graduate sample surveys.

Changes in educational participation rates across cohorts are likely to imply changes in the ability-education relationship and thereby to impact on estimated returns to education. We show that skewness in the underlying ability distribution is a key determinant of the impact of graduate expansion on the college wage premium. Calibrating the model against the increased proportion of university students in Britain, we find that changes in the average ability gap between university students and others are likely to have mitigated demand-side forces.

Changes in educational participation rates across cohorts are likely to imply changes in the ability-education relationship and thereby to impact on estimated returns to education. We show that skewness in the underlying ability distribution is a key determinant of the impact of graduate expansion on the college wage premium. Calibrating the model against the increased proportion of university students in Britain, we find that changes in the average ability gap between university students and others are likely to have mitigated demand-side forces.

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 degree award. In a signalling framework, we examine the implications of this on biases across cohorts in estimates of educational returns. In an empirical analysis, we exploit administrative data on whole populations of UK university students for ten graduate cohorts to investigate the extent to which early labour market outcomes vary with class of degree awarded. Consistent with our theoretical model, we find that returns by degree class increased across cohorts during a period of substantial graduate expansion. We also corroborate the empirical findings with evidence from complementary data on graduate sample surveys.

We exploit a rich administrative panel data-set for cohorts of Economics students at a UK university in order to identify causal effects of class absence on student performance. We utilise the panel properties of the data to control for unobserved heterogeneity across students and hence for endogeneity between absence and academic performance of students stemming from the likely influence of unobserved effort and ability on both absence and performance. Our estimations also exploit features of the data such as the random assignment of students to classes and information on the timetable of classes, which yield potential instruments in our identification strategy. Among other results, we find that there is a causal effect of absence on performance for students: missing class leads to poorer performance. There is evidence from a quantile regression specification that this is particularly true for better-performing students, consistent with our hypothesis that effects of absence on performance are likely to vary with factors such as student ability.

We exploit a rich administrative panel data-set for cohorts of Economics students at a UK university in order to identify causal effects of class absence on student performance. We exploit the panel properties of the data to control for unobserved heterogeneity across students and hence for endogeneity between class absence and academic performance of students stemming from the likely influence of effort and ability on both absence and performance. Our estimations also exploit features of the data such as the random assignment of students to classes and information on the timetable of classes, which provides potential instruments in our identification strategy. Among other results we find, from a quantile regression specification, that there is a causal effect of absence on performance for students: missing class leads to poorer performance. There is evidence that this is particularly true for better-performing students, consistent with our hypothesis that effects of absence on performance are likely to vary with factors such as student ability.

We present comparable evidence on intergenerational earnings mobility for Denmark,\ud Finland, Norway, the UK and the US, with a focus on the role of gender and marital status.\ud We confirm that earnings mobility in the Nordic countries is typically greater than in the US\ud and in the UK, but find that, in contrast to all other groups, for married women mobility is\ud approximately uniform across countries when estimates are based on women's own\ud earnings. Defining offspring outcomes in terms of family earnings, on the other hand, leads to\ud estimates of intergenerational mobility in the Nordic countries which exceed those for the US\ud and the UK for both men and women, single and married. Unlike in the Nordic countries, we\ud find that married women with children and with husbands from affluent backgrounds tend to\ud exhibit reduced labor supply in the US and the UK. In these countries, it is the combination of\ud assortative mating and labor supply responses which weakens the association between\ud married women's own earnings and their parents' earnings.

Udgivelsesdato: MAR

For the 1990-92 and 1998-2000 cohorts we find the probability of dropping out of medical school is lower for students (i) with better prior qualifications, (ii) with a parent who is a doctor, (iii) living on campus.

We present comparable evidence on intergenerational earnings mobility for Denmark, Finland, Norway, the UK and the US, with a focus on the role of gender and marital status. We confirm that earnings mobility in the Nordic countries is typically greater than in the US and in the UK, but find that, in contrast to all other groups, for married women mobility is approximately uniform across countries when estimates are based on women's own earnings. Defining offspring outcomes in terms of family earnings, on the other hand, leads to estimates of intergenerational mobility in the Nordic countries which exceed those for the US and the UK for both men and women, single and married. Unlike in the Nordic countries, we find that married women with children and with husbands from affluent backgrounds tend to exhibit reduced labor supply in the US and the UK. In these countries, it is the combination of assortative mating and labor supply responses which weakens the association between married women's own earnings and their parents' earnings.

We exploit individual-level administrative data for whole populations of UK university students for the leaving cohorts of 1985-1993 (together with that of 1998) to investigate the influence of degree performance on graduate occupational earnings. We find that there is a significant premium associated with a good performance at university. We also find that this premium increased between 1985/6 and 1993/4, a period of substantial expansion in the graduate population. Among other results, we find that there are significant differences in the occupational earnings of leavers according to university attended, subject studied, and pre-university educational and social background, ceteris paribus.

As in many other countries, government policy in the UK has the objective of raising the participation rate of young people in higher education, while also increasing the share of the costs of higher education borne by students themselves. A rationale for the latter element comes from evidence of a high private return to university undergraduate degrees. However, much of this evidence pre-dates the rapid expansion in the graduate population. In the current paper, we use evidence from a cohort of people born in 1970 to estimate hourly wage returns to a university degree. Among other results, we find (i) that compared to an earlier 1958 birth cohort the average returns to a first degree for men changed very little, while the return for women declined substantially and (ii) substantial evidence of differences in returns to a first degree according to subject area of study and class of degree awarded.

We show that the patterns of intergenerational earnings mobility in Denmark, Finland, and Norway, unlike those for the US and the UK, are highly nonlinear. The Nordic relationship between log earnings of sons and fathers is flat in the lower segments of the fathers’ earnings distribution – sons growing up in the poorest households have the same adult earnings prospects as sons in moderately poor households – and is increasingly positive in middle and upper segments. This convex pattern contrasts sharply with our findings for the United States and the United Kingdom, where the relationship is much closer to being linear. As a result, cross-country comparisons of intergenerational earnings elasticities may be misleading with respect to transmission mechanisms in the central parts of the earnings distribution, and uninformative in the tails of the distribution.

We develop methods and employ similar sample restrictions to analyse differences in intergenerational\ud earnings mobility across the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland,\ud Norway and Sweden. We examine earnings mobility among pairs of fathers and sons as well\ud as fathers and daughters using both mobility matrices and regression and correlation coefficients.\ud Our results suggest that all countries exhibit substantial earnings persistence across\ud generations, but with statistically significant differences across countries. Mobility is lower in\ud the U.S. than in the U.K., where it is lower again compared to the Nordic countries. Persistence\ud is greatest in the tails of the distributions and tends to be particularly high in the upper\ud tails: though in the U.S. this is reversed with a particularly high likelihood that sons of the\ud poorest fathers will remain in the lowest earnings quintile. This is a challenge to the popular\ud notion of ’American exceptionalism’. The U.S. also differs from the Nordic countries in\ud its very low likelihood that sons of the highest earners will show downward ’long-distance’\ud mobility into the lowest earnings quintile. In this, the U.K. is more similar to the U.S.

In the context of the UK Government’s ambitious programme of medical school expansion, it is important to have an understanding of how the medical school admissions process works, and with what effects. The issue is also relevant for the Schwartz Review (2004) into higher education admissions. Using individual-level data for two entire cohorts of medical student applicants in UK universities and exploiting the panel structure of the applicant-medical school information, we estimate models to analyse the probability that an individual student receives an offer of a place. We find that prior qualifications, school type, gender, age, social class and ethnic background are major influences on whether a student receives an offer from a medical school. We also find that the probability of receiving an offer from a particular medical school is influenced by the identity of other medical schools applied to. Finally, we find evidence that certain groups of applicants are particularly disadvantaged the later they apply within the application process.

As in many other countries, government policy in the UK has the objective of raising the participation rate of young people in higher education, while increasing the share of the costs of higher education paid by students themselves. A rationale for the latter element comes from evidence of a high private return to university undergraduate degrees. However, much of this evidence pre-dates the rapid expansion in the graduate population. In the current paper, we use evidence from a cohort of young people born in Britain in 1970 to update influential evidence on returns to a first degree based on a previous 1958 birth cohort. We also analyse variations in returns by degree subject and by class of degree. Our analysis incorporates proxying and matching, control function and propensity score matching methods. Among other results, we find (i) that the returns to a first degree for men changed very little across the two cohorts while the return for women declined substantially and (ii) evidence of differences in returns to a first degree according to subject area of study and class of degree awarded.