The Sex and the Uni: Educational Assortative Matching the Over-Education*

Educational assortative matching encourages individuals to acquire education so as to increase the probability of marrying a high-income partner. But since everyone is more educated, the chances of a good match do not change. Hence over education emerges, as in absence of educational assortative matching individuals could reach their optimal level of education by exploiting less educational resources. Over-education is stronger the higher the probability of educational assortative matching, the larger the relative importance of the partner.s income in determining utility and ability levels, and the lower the cost of education. Government intervention can reach a socially e¢ cient level of education through either a tax on education or income.Educational Assortative Matching; Over-Education.

Sex and the Uni: Higher Education Effects in Job and Marital Satisfaction*

This paper examines how higher education affects job and marital satisfaction. We build up a model with assortative matching where individuals decide whether to attend university both for obtaining job satisfaction and for increasing the probability to be matched with an educated partner. The theoretical results suggest that, as assortative matching increases, the number of educated individuals increases, their job satisfaction falls while their marital satisfaction increases. We test our model using the British Household Panel Survey data for the years 2003-2006. Our empirical findings support the theoretical results.job satisfaction; marital satisfaction; assortative matching

Sex and the Uni: How Assortative Matching Affects Graduate Earnings

This paper examines how assortative matching affects graduate earnings through the choice of attending university. We build up a model where individuals decide whether to attend university for increasing both their future income and the probability to marry an educated partner. The theoretical results suggest that, as assortative matching increases, the number of graduates increases and their earnings fall. The test using the British Household Panel Survey for years 1991-2006 supports the theoretical findings

Meeting at School. Assortative Matching in Partnerships and Over-Education

This paper argues that assortative matching may explain over-education. Education determines individuals' income and, due to the presence of assortative matching, the quality of the partner, who can be a colleague or a spouse. Thus an individual acquires some education to improve the expected partner's quality. But since everybody does that, the partner's quality does not increase and over-education emerges. Tax progression to correct over-education has ambiguous effects on the educational incentives according to the individuals' ability. We test the model using the British Household Panel Survey. The empirical results support our theoretical findings

Social Background Effects on School and Job Opportunities

This paper proposes a theory on how students social background affects their school attainment and job opportunities. We study a setup where students differ in ability and social background, and we analyze the interaction between a school and an employer. Students with disadvantaged background are penalized compared to other students: they receive less teaching and/or are less likely to be hired. A surprising result is that policy aiming to subsidize education for disadvantaged students might in fact decrease their job opportunities

On the Emergence of Overcompliance with Endogenous Environmental Standards and Patronising Consumers

We propose a model of environmental overcompliance in a duopoly setting where consumers are environmentally concerned and may patronise the product they buy, firms set their green investment to abate the impact of productivity on pollution and a government sets the environmental standard with the aim to maximise welfare. We show that, with no patronising consumers, overcompliance is unilateral by the firm with higher quality standard under Bertrand behaviour, whereas both firms may overcomply under Cournot competition if the environmental impact of production is sufficiently low. Conversely with patronising consumers, overcompliance is unilateral with low environmental impact of production under price competition, and both firm overcomply under quantity competition

Private versus public companies with strategic CSR

AbstractWe analyze the effects of strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on social welfare in an industry where firms are owned by consumers (publicly owned) and CSR commitment takes the form of a fraction of the consumer surplus into the firms' objective function. We compare this market configuration with the standard case of firms owned by entrepreneurs (privately owned). In line with the empirical evidence, consumers' ownership gives an incentive to adopt a socially responsible, welfare improving statute. While privately-owned companies are limited in the level of social concern to implement, publicly-owned companies are not, and CSR is welfare-improving for any level of social concern. Surprisingly, a market configuration of publicly-owned CSR companies decreases welfare compared to an oligopoly of privately-owned CSR companies. The analysis is then extended by considering asymmetric oligopolies with different company types

Endogenous Timing in Quality Investments and Price Competition

We modify the price-setting version of the vertically differentiated duopoly model by Aoki (2003) by introducing an extended game in which firms noncooperatively choose the timing of moves at the quality stage. Our results show that there are multiple equilibria in pure strategies, in which firms always select sequential play at the quality stage. We also investigate the mixed-strategy equilibrium, revealing that the probability of generating outcomes out of equilibrium is higher than its complement to one. In the alternative of full market coverage, we show that the quality stage is solved in dominant strategies and therefore the choice of roles becomes irrelevant as the Nash and Stackelberg solutions coincide

Religious attitudes and home bias: theory and evidence from a pilot study

We compare a Bertrand with a Cournot duopoly in a setting where production is polluting and exploits natural resources, and firms bear convex production costs. We adopt Dastidar's (1995) approach, yielding a continuum of Bertrand-Nash equilibria ranging above marginal cost pricing also, to show that softening price competition may lead to a lower output production in a Bertrand rather than a Cournot industry. The market structure bringing about the lowest output determines the highest social welfare, given the fact that the negative environmental effects of production more than offset the gain in consumer surplus

Minimum Quality Standard Under Cournot Competition and Pollution

We extend the analysis carried out by Valletti (2000) by considering an environmental externality in a vertically differentiated duopoly where firms compete à la Cournot with fixed costs of quality improvement. We show that, if the weight of the external effect is high enough, the resulting minimum quality standard is indeed binding