This paper uses a difference-in-difference style estimation strategy to test separately the impact of competition from public sector and private sector hospitals on the efficiency of public hospitals. Our identification strategy takes advantage of the phased introduction of a recent set of...

This paper examines whether or not hospital competition in a market with fixed reimbursement prices can prompt improvements in clinical quality. In January 2006, the British Government introduced a major extension of their market-based reforms to the English National Health Service. From January...

The issue of social segregation in schools has seen a recent resurgence of interest – in the US, UK and internationally – as the debate rages on about whether policies that expand families’ freedom to choose amongst schools encourage divergence or convergence in the types of pupil...

This report estimates housing-cost-earnings differentials across labour market areas in Britain. We show that quality-adjusted housing costs rise on average, one for one with the skill-adjusted earnings of the average working household. However, the relationship is Ushaped, with relatively high...

Researchers in economics of education usually assume that parents choose schools for their high academic performance, with some support from revealed preference evidence based on local house prices. However, anecdotal evidence and common sense suggest that school quality is not one-dimensional...

In this paper we implement a powerful empirical approach than has not previously been applied to rail transport evaluation to ascertain how much consumers value rail access. We study the effects on house prices of a transport innovation that altered the distance to the nearest station for some...

We explore the association between urban density and pupil attainment using three cohorts of pupils in schooling in England. Although – as widely recognised – attainment in dense urban places is low on average, this is not because urban environments disadvantage pupils, but because the most...

This paper investigates wage disparities across sub-national labour markets in Britain using anewly available microdata set. The findings show that wage disparity across areas is verypersistent over time. While area effects play a role in this wage disparity, most of it is due toindividual...