The paper focuses on the empirical evidence on the use and usefulness of performance measures in the public sector. It begins with consideration of the features of the public sector which make the use of performance measures complex: the issues of multiple principals and multiple tasks. It...

This paper evaluates the impact of a team-based incentive scheme piloted in the public sector agency, Jobcentre Plus. The way the scheme has been designed raises many questions for which theory makes predictions. We test these predictions against our data. We find that team size affects the...

In this paper we explore the association between family income and children’s cognitive ability (IQ and school performance), socio-emotional outcomes (self esteem, locus of control and behavioural problems) and physical health (risk of obesity). We develop a decomposition technique that allows...

This paper addresses a lack of evidence on the impact of performance pay in the public sector by evaluating a pilot scheme of incentives in a major government agency. The incentive scheme was based on teams and covered quantity and quality targets, measured with varying degrees of precision. We...

Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of good management for firm performance. Here, we focus on management in not-for-profits (NFPs). We present a model predicting that management quality will be lower in NFPs compared to for-profits (FPs), but that outputs may not be worse if...

The use of genetic markers as instrumental variables (IV) is receiving increasing attention from epidemiologists, economists, statisticians and social scientists. This paper examines the conditions that need to be met for genetic variants to be used as instruments. Although these have been...

We examine the effect of survey measurement error on the empirical relationship between child mental health and personal and family characteristics, and between child mental health and educational progress. Our contribution is to use unique UK survey data that contains (potentially biased)...

A large literature uses parental evaluations of child health status to provide evidence on the socioeconomic determinants of health. If how parents perceive health questions differs by income or education level, then estimates of the socioeconomic gradient are likely to be biased and potentially...

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...

In this paper we examine the causal impact of competition on management quality. We analyze the hospital sector where geographic proximity is a key determinant of competition, and English public hospitals where political competition can be used to construct instrumental variables for market...