'League table' information on school effectiveness in England generally relies on either a comparison of the average outcomes of pupils by school, e.g. mean exam scores, or on estimates of the average value added by each school. These approaches assume that the information parents and...

Charitable giving is an important source of funding for overseas development and emergency relief. Donations in the UK are about a quarter of the size of government development aid. There has been strong growth over time, reflecting the activities of development charities and the public response...

The empirical literature on the determinants of charities' donation income, distinguishing the charitable cause, is small. We extend it by paying particular attention to development charities, capturing both charity and donor characteristics in a single framework. Using a newly constructed panel...

Charitable bequests are a major source of income for charities but surprisingly little is known about them. The aim of this paper is to propose a multi-stage framework for analysing the bequest decision and to examine the evidence for Great Britain provided by new data on estates. The novelty of...

We show how young people's expectations about application to university change during the teenage years, drawing on the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE). We reveal the pattern of change by family background (measured by parental education and family income), prior attainment...

The international surveys of pupil achievement – PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS – have been widely used to compare socioeconomic gradients in children’s cognitive abilities across countries. Socioeconomic status is typically measured drawing on children’s reports of family or...

Investigation of peer effects on pupil’s achievement with survey data on samples of schools and pupils within schools may mean that only a random sample of peers is observed for each individual pupil. This generates classical measurement error on peer variables. Hence under OLS model...

We analyse response patterns to an important survey of school children, exploiting rich auxiliary information on respondents’ and non-respondents’ cognitive ability that is correlated both with response and the learning achievement that the survey aims to measure. The survey is the...

Income is an important correlate for numerous phenomena in the social sciences. But many surveys collect data with just a single question covering all forms of income. This raises questions over the reliability of the data collected. Issues of reliability are heightened when individuals are...

Investigation of peer effects on achievement with sample survey data on schools may mean that only a random sample of peers is observed for each individual. This generates classical measurement error in peer variables, resulting in the estimated peer group effects in a regression model being...