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The evidence on why students from lower social origin are persistently underrepresented in higher education (HE) suggests social, educational and economic factors all play a role. We concentrate on the influence of monetary costs/benefits and how these are influenced by social origin. In particular, we consider the effect of a class-based wage penalty in the labour market and, using evidence from a large-scale survey of Scottish students, we show how the greater financial constraints facing working-class students affects the incentive to participate in HE. Using a simple model of human capital investment, the low rate of working-class participation in HE is shown to be consistent with rational behaviour, i.e. weighing the monetary costs and benefits, participating in HE is a less attractive investment proposition for some students. We conduct simulations which suggest this could be mitigated by generous income-contingent support.

This dissemination paper presents findings and recommendations produced from the research\ud project entitled Policies Supporting Young Adults in their Life Course: A Comparative Study of\ud Lifelong Learning and Inclusion in Education and Work in Europe (YOUNG_ADULLLT). The\ud project ran from 2016 to 2019 and was funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020\ud Research and Innovation initiative.\ud \ud This paper is intended for use by Scottish policymakers, practitioners and researchers in the\ud fields of adult education, lifelong learning, youth policy and skills policy, as well as international audiences interested in the case of Scotland.

This report was commissioned by Link Community Development (LCD) in response to internal dialogue within the organisation about the strengths, relevance and appropriateness of existing and ongoing evaluation practices. LCD implements interventions to support education in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda and has done so for several years. Over this period a range of project evaluations have been commissioned as well as carried out by LCD staff. In preparation for a large funding bid to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, input was solicited from the Robert Owen Centre (ROC) on design of evaluation research for subsequent project activities. As part of these discussions LCD and the authors formulated some objectives for a preliminary evidence review through a series of meetings in late 2018 and early 2019, which ROC was then commissioned to carry out.

A wave of recent empirical work has uncovered a social class-wage gap in several advanced economies, where individuals from working class backgrounds get paid less than those with identical observable characteristics, but from a higher social class. This observation has been referred to as the "class ceiling" on account of similarities with the gender pay gap. Hitherto, this work has primarily focussed on individuals with graduate qualifications. I extend this analysis to the full range of qualifications in the UK labour market, separately identifying different levels of vocational and academic qualifications. This draws on a recent innovation in the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey, which contains a social class variable from 2014 onwards. This analysis shows that an average class wage gap masks heterogeneity in the severity of wage penalties across different social classes and educational routes. For individuals in the most disadvantaged group findings are mixed. Overall, the wage gaps observed for those with vocational qualifications are modest in magnitude (around 5%) and weakly statistically significant. For most academic qualifications the gap is strongly significant and ranges from 8% to 13%. A notable exception is undergraduate qualifications, for which interaction terms with class are not significant.

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No abstract available.

Micro-econometric evidence reveals high private returns to education, most prominently in low-income countries. However, it is disputed to what extent this translates into a macro-economic impact. This paper projects the increase in human capital from higher education in Malawi and uses a dynamic applied general equilibrium model to estimate the resulting macroeconomics impact. This is contingent upon endogenous adjustments, in particular how labour productivity affects competitiveness and if this in turn stimulates exports. Choice among commonly applied labour market assumptions and trade elasticities results in widely different outcomes. Appraisal of such policies should consider not only the impact on human capital stocks, but also adjustments outside the labour market.

A ubiquitous feature of life in peripheral communities is that school leavers have to move away to attend further and higher education. From the point of view of an individual student and his family significant amounts have to be spent to pay for term time costs. These are at least partially funded through saving incomes earned locally. These term time expenditures are then spent at the place of study, typically a central city. This gives rise to a spatial demand-shift effect, where students increase consumption where they study and reduce consumption where they are from. Because of this, the location of HEIs can have an important impact not only upon their host economies but also on the localities where students originate from. This paper analysis the flow of students within Scotland and the resulting spatial shift of consumption expenditures. The focus is on the peripheral region of the Highlands and Islands (HI) and its interaction with the Rest of Scotland (ROS). Student records data are used to determine the origin and destination of HE students in Scotland. This reveals a significant net-outflow of students from the HI to the ROS. Using survey-based expenditure profiles and a custom built 2-region Input-Output table the economic impact of these student flows are estimated for both sending and receiving regions.

We raise the issue of how appropriately to attribute economic impact to consumption expenditures. Despite the salience of the topic for applied economics it has not received much explicit attention in recent literature. In Input-Output analysis consumption expenditures are either treated as wholly endogenous or wholly exogenous. For many applications, such as those focusing on the impacts of tourism, benefits systems or student expenditures, these binomial assumptions are not satisfactory. Therefore practical necessity has resulted in conventions ('rules of thumb') for dealing with such cases. We argue that consumption is neither wholly endogenous nor wholly exogenous but that the degree of this distinction is rather an empirical matter. To deal with this issue we set out a general model for the treatment of consumption expenditures. We illustrate its application through the case of university students in Scotland and determine the exogeneity of their expenditures drawing on survey evidence. Students are a particularly useful example as we can analyse the difference in impacts between individual student groups and how the impacts of students at particular institutions are influenced by the composition of the student body. Furthermore we take into account the binding budget constraint of public expenditures (as is the case for devolved regions in the UK) and examine how this affects the impact attributed to students' consumption expenditures.

Biomass is already widely used as a low-carbon source of energy with a range of bioenergy options in use across Europe. This includes everything from traditional sources such as heat from wood-burning stoves to crop-based biofuels and biogas plants using household and farm waste. One of the main drawbacks of many bioenergy sources is that the energy crops displace alternative land use, such as for food production. Seaweed has been suggested as a source of next generation bioenergy to address these concerns. It is harvested and cultivated on a commercial scale in several countries across the world but in most coastal areas it is relatively underexploited and therefore offers significant potential.

A significant drawback of many bioenergy sources is that energy crops displace alternative land use, such as for food. Responding to this criticism seaweed has been suggested as a source of next generation bioenergy. It is harvested and cultivated on a commercial scale in several countries in Europe (Norway, France), Asia (China, Japan) and South-America (Chile), but in most coastal areas it is relatively underexploited and therefore offers an appealing prospect: at least in principle.

This special issue of the Fraser Economic Commentary presents a diverse selection of papers on peripheral economies. These are a sample of papers presented at an international conference of the Regional Studies Association (RSA) research network on Peripherality, Marginality and Border Issues in Northern Europe in September 2012. The conference was hosted by the University Centre of the Westfjords in Ísafjörður, Iceland. This followed previous successful standalone events organized by the network in Norway and Scotland, as well as various special sessions at other RSA events. The papers are diverse in terms of the geographical areas they focus on, both within the UK and its neighbours in the Nordic countries. The methods are diverse, as are the disciplinary backgrounds of the participants.

It is a well-established fact in the literature on simulating Input-Output tables that mechanical methods for estimating intermediate trade lead to biased results where cross-hauling is underestimated and Type-I multipliers are overstated. Repeated findings to this effect have led to a primary emphasis on advocating the accurate estimation of intermediate trade flows. This paper reviews previous research and argues for a qualification of the consensus view: When simulating IO tables, construction approaches need to consider spill-over effects driven by wage and consumption flows. In particular, for the case of metropolitan economies, wage and consumption flows are important if accurate Type-II multipliers are to be obtained. This is demonstrated by constructing an interregional Input-Output table, which captures interdependencies between a city and its commuter belt, nested within the wider regional economy. In addition to identifying interdependencies caused by interregional intermediate purchases, data on subregional household incomes and commuter flows are used to identify interdependencies from wage payments and household consumption. The construction of the table is varied around a range of assumptions on intermediate trade and household consumption to capture the sensitivity of multipliers.

We examine the complications involved in attributing emissions at a sub-regional or local level. Specifically, we look at how functional specialisation embedded within the metropolitan area can, via trade between sub-regions, create intrametropolitan emissions interdependencies; and how this complicates environmental policy implementation in an analogous manner to international trade at the national level. For this purpose we use a 3-region emissions extended input-output model of the Glasgow metropolitan area (2 regions: city and surrounding suburban area) and the rest of Scotland. The model utilises data on commuter flows and household consumption to capture income and consumption flows across sub-regions. This enables a carbon attribution analysis at the sub-regional level, allowing us to shed light on the significant emissions interdependencies that can exist within metropolitan areas.

This paper replicates the analysis of Scottish HEIs in Hermannsson et al (2010a) for the case of Northern Ireland in order to provide a self-contained analysis that is readily accessible by those whose primary concern is with the regional impacts of Northern-Irish HEIs. When we treat each of the four Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that existed in Northern Ireland in 2006 as separate sectors in conventional input-output analysis, their expenditure impacts per unit of final demand appear rather homogenous, with the apparent heterogeneity of their overall impacts being primarily driven by scale. However, a disaggregation of their income by source reveals considerable variation in their dependence upon funding from the devolved Assembly and their ability to draw in income/funding from external sources. Acknowledging the binding budget constraint of the Northern Ireland Assembly and deriving balanced expenditure multipliers reveals large differences in the netexpenditure impact of HEIs upon the Northern Irish economy, with the source of variation being the origin of income. Applying a novel treatment of student expenditure impacts, identifying the amount of exogenous spending per student, modifies the heterogeneity of the overall expenditure impacts. On balance this suggests that the impacts of impending budget cut-backs will be quite different by institution depending on their sensitivity to public funding. However, predicting the outcome of budget cutbacks at the margin is problematic for reasons that we identify.

This paper replicates the analysis of Scottish HEIs in Hermannsson et al (2010a) for the case of Wales in order to provide a self-contained analysis that is readily accessible by those whose primary concern is with the regional impacts of Welsh HEIs. When we treat each of the twelve Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that existed in Wales in 2006 as separate sectors in conventional input-output analysis, their expenditure impacts per unit of final demand appear rather homogenous, with the apparent heterogeneity of their overall impacts being primarily driven by scale. However, a disaggregation of their income by source reveals considerable variation in their dependence upon funding from the devolved Welsh Assembly Government and their ability to draw in income/funding from external sources. Acknowledging the binding budget constraint of the Welsh Assembly Government and deriving balanced expenditure multipliers reveals large differences in the net-expenditure impact of HEIs upon the Welsh economy, with the source of variation being the origin of income. Applying a novel treatment of student expenditure impacts, identifying the amount of exogenous spending per student, modifies the heterogeneity of the overall expenditure impacts. On balance this suggests that the impacts of impending budget cut-backs will be quite different by institution depending on their sensitivity to public funding. However, predicting the outcome of budget cutbacks at the margin is problematic for reasons that we identify.

This paper replicates the analysis of Scottish HEIs in Hermannsson et al (2010a) to identify the impact of London-based HEIs on the English economy in order to provide a self-contained analysis that is readily accessible by those whose primary concern is with the regional impacts of London HEIs. When we treat each of the 38 London-based Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that existed in England in 2006 as separate sectors in conventional input-output analysis, their expenditure impacts per unit of final demand appear rather homogenous (though less so than HEIs in Wales and Scotland), with the apparent heterogeneity of their overall impacts being primarily driven by scale. However, a disaggregation of their income by source reveals considerable variation in their dependence upon general public funding and their ability to draw in income/funding from external sources. Acknowledging the possible alternative uses of the public funding and deriving balanced expenditure multipliers reveals large differences in the net-expenditure impact of London HEIs upon the English economy, with the source of variation being the origin of income. Applying a novel treatment of student expenditure impacts, identifying the amount of exogenous spending per student, modifies the heterogeneity of the overall expenditure impacts. On balance this suggests that the impacts of impending budget cut-backs will be quite different by institution depending on their sensitivity to public funding. However, predicting the outcome of budget cutbacks at the margin is problematic for reasons that we identify.

This paper describes how the education sector of the Welsh Input-Output tables is disaggregated to identify a separate sector for each of Wales’s twelve Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The process draws on accounting and survey data to accurately determine the incomes and expenditures of each institution. In particular we emphasise determining the HEIs incomes source of origin to inform their treatment, as endogenous or exogenous, in subsequent analyses. The HEI-disaggregated Input-Output table provides a useful descriptive snapshot of the Welsh economy and the role of HEIs within it for a particular year, 2006. The table can be used to derive multipliers and conduct various impact studies of each institution or the sector as a whole. The table is furthermore useful to calibrate other multi-sectoral, HEI-disaggregated models of regional economies, including Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models.

This paper describes how the education sector of an Input-Output table for Northern Ireland is disaggregated to identify a separate sector for each of the four Northern Irish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The process draws on accounting and survey data to accurately determine the incomes and expenditures of each institution. In particular we emphasise determining the HEIs incomes source of origin to inform their treatment, as endogenous or exogenous, in subsequent analyses. The HEI-disaggregated Input-Output table provides a useful descriptive snapshot of the Northern Irish economy and the role of HEIs within it for a particular year, 2006. The table can be used to derive multipliers and conduct various impact studies of each institution or the sector as a whole. The table is furthermore useful to calibrate other multisectoral, HEI-disaggregated models of regional economies, including Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models.

Comparing each of the twenty Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Scotland as separate sectors in an Input-Output table suggests their expenditure patterns are homogenous and that the apparent heterogeneity of their impacts is primarily driven by scale. However, a disaggregation of their income by source reveals a disparity in their dependence upon funding from the devolved Scottish Government and their ability to draw in income/funding from external sources. Acknowledging the binding budget constraint of the Scottish Government and deriving balanced expenditure multipliers reveals large differences in the net-expenditure impact of HEIs upon the Scottish economy, with the source of variation being the origin of income. Applying a novel treatment of student expenditure impacts, identifying the amount of exogenous spending per student, modifies the heterogeneity of the overall expenditure impacts. On balance this suggests that the impacts of impending budget cut-backs will be quite different by institution depending on their sensitivity to public funding. However, predicting the outcome of budget cutbacks at the margin is problematic as we do not know whether public and external incomes are complements or substitutions (and indeed this may vary between individual HEIs).

A “policy scepticism” has emerged that challenges the results of conventional regional HEI impact analyses. Its denial of the importance of the expenditure impacts of HEIs appears to be based on a belief in either a binding regional resource constraint or a regional public sector budget constraint. In this paper we provide a systematic critique of this policy scepticism. However, while rejecting the extreme form of policy scepticism, we argue that it is crucial to recognise the importance of the public-sector expenditure constraints that are binding under devolution. We show how conventional impact analyses can be augmented to accommodate regional public sector budget constraints. While our results suggest that conventional impact studies overestimate the expenditure impacts of HEIs, they also demonstrate that the policy scepticism that treats these expenditure effects as irrelevant neglects some key aspects of HEIs, in particular their export intensity.