The use of genetic markers as instrumental variables (IV) is receiving increasing attention from economists. This paper examines the conditions that need to be met for genetic variants to be used as instruments. We combine the IV literature with that from genetic epidemiology, with an...

Teacher wages are commonly subject to centralised wage bargaining. This results in flat teacher wages across heterogeneous labour markets and means teacher wages will be relatively lower where local labour market wages are high. The implication is that teacher output will be lower in high...

Teacher wages are commonly set in a manner that results in flat wages across heterogeneous labor markets. Consequently teacher wages will be relatively worse in areas where local labor market wages are high. The implication is that teacher output will be lower in high outside wage areas. This...

Interventions that improve childhood health directly improve the quality of life and, in addition, have multiplier effects, producing sustained population and economic gains in poor countries. We suggest how contemporary global institutions shaping the development, pricing and distribution of...

The recent literature on intergenerational mobility in the UK has been focused on measuring the level and change in the relationship between parental income and children’s earnings as adults among recent cohorts. This paper is the first to analyse in detail the factors that generate these...

Sociologists and economists reach quite different conclusions about how intergenerational mobility in the UK compares for those growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Persistence in social class is found to be unchanged while family income is found to be more closely related to sons’ earnings for...

Family income is found to be more closely related to sons' earnings for those born in 1970 compared to those born in 1958. This result is in stark contrast to the finding on the basis of social class; intergenerational mobility for this outcome is found to be unchanged. We set up a formal...

The aim of this paper is to examine gender related differences in performance at age 16. We investigate a number of possible explanations for the underachievement of boys relative to girls, the so-called ‘gender gap’. We employ a national dataset of the matched exam results of the entire...

English secondary schools operate within a performance management system, which includes league tables reporting school performance across a number of indicators. This paper reports the results of an interview-based study, showing that head teachers care about their school’s place in the...

Aspects of both educational development and multi-cultural inter-relationships are frequently related to school ethnic composition, with arguments that ethnically segregated schools both retard the development of multi-ethnic understanding and influence educational performance. In this paper, we...