What makes students satisfied? A discussion and analysis of the UK’s national student survey

This paper analyses data from the National Students Survey, determining which groups of students expressed the greatest levels of satisfaction. We find students registered on clinical degrees and those studying humanities to be the most satisfied, with those in general engineering and media studies the least. We also find contentment to be higher among part-time students, and significantly higher among Russell group and post-1992 universities. We further investigate the sub-areas that drive overall student satisfaction, finding teaching and course organisation to be the most important aspects, with resources and assessment and feedback far less relevant. We then develop a multi- attribute measure of satisfaction which we argue produces a more accurate and more stable reflection of overall student satisfaction than that based on a single question

Medieval property investors, ca. 1300-1500

This paper utilises a dataset of freehold land and property transactions from medieval England to highlight the growing commercialisation of the economy. By drawing on the legal records we are able to demonstrate that the medieval real estate market provided the opportunity for investors to profit. Careful analysis of the data provides evidence of group purchases, multiple transactions and investors buying outside of their own locality. The identification of these ‘investors’ and their buying behaviours, set within the context of the English medieval economy, contributes to the early commercialisation debate

Advance Contracts for the Sale of Wool in Medieval England; An Undeveloped and Inefficient Market?

While it is commonly believed that derivative instruments are a recent invention, we document the existence of forward contracts for the sale of wool in medieval England around 700 years ago. The contracts were generally entered into by English monasteries, who frequently sold their wool for up to twenty years in advance to mostly foreign and particularly Italian merchants. Employing a unique source of data collected by hand from the historical records, we determine the interest rates implied in these transactions and we also examine the efficiency of the forward and spot markets. The calculated interest rates average around 20%, in accordance with available information concerning the interest rates used in other types of transactions at that time. Perhaps surprisingly, we also find little evidence of informational inefficiencies in these markets.Wood market, forward contracts, market efficinecy, Medieval England, Interest rates

Leger est aprendre mes fort est arendre;: Wool, Debt and the Dispersal of Pipewell Abbey (1280 - 1330)

has long been known that English Cistercian monasteries often sold their wool in advance to foreign merchants in the late thirteenth century. The abbey of Pipewell in Northamptonshire features in a number of such contracts with Cahorsin merchants. This paper looks again at these contracts in the context of over 200 other such agreements found in the governmental records. Why did Pipewell descend into penury over this fifty year period? This case study demonstrates that the promise of ready cash for their most valuable commodity led such abbots to make ambitious agreements – taking on yet more debt to service existing creditors - that would lead to their eventual bankruptcy.

Is there a ‘magic link’ between research activity, professional teaching qualifications and student satisfaction?

The increasing prominence given to student satisfaction at UK Universities as a response to the introduction of fees and the growing stature of league tables has led to a desire to understand the factors that affect the quality of the student experience. Therefore, this paper examines whether students who study at universities in the UK where research is highly rated or where a high proportion of faculty are professionally qualified are more satisfied, measuring satisfaction through data from the National Student Survey. Our key results are first, that students are happiest at pre-1992 universities outside the Russell group and where the amount of top-rated research is lower. Second, we uncover no link between student contentment and the percentage of faculty holding formal teaching qualifications. Our findings have important implications for university policies regarding the link between research and teaching and for the current drive to ‘professionalise’ teaching in higher education

Medieval foreign exchange: a time series analysis

This chapter applies rigorous statistical analysis to existing datasets of medieval exchange rates quoted in merchants’ letters sent from Barcelona, Bruges and Venice between 1380 and 1310, which survive in the archive of Francesco di Marco Datini of Prato. First, it tests the exchange rates for stationarity. Second, it uses regression analysis to examine the seasonality of exchange rates at the three financial centres and compares them against contemporary descriptions by the merchant Giovanni di Antonio da Uzzano. Third, it tests for structural breaks in the exchange rate series

Does managerial turnover affect football club share prices?

This paper analyses the 53 managerial sackings and resignations from 16 stock exchange listed English football clubs during the nine seasons between 2000/01 and 2008/09. The results demonstrate that, on average, a managerial sacking results in a post-announcement day market-adjusted share price rise of 0.3%, whilst a resignation leads to a drop in share price of 1% that continues for a trading month thereafter, cumulating in a negative abnormal return of over 8% from a trading day before the event. These findings are intuitive, and suggest that sacking a poorly performing manager may be welcomed by the markets as a possible route to better future match performance, while losing a capable manager through resignation, who typically progresses to a superior job, will result in a drop in a club’s share price. The paper also reveals that while the impact of managerial departures on stock price volatilities is less clear-cut, speculation in the newspapers is rife in the build-up to such an event

The performance of football club managers: skill or luck?

This paper evaluates the extent to which the performance of English Premier League football club managers can be attributed to skill or luck when measured separately from the characteristics of the team. We first use a specification that models managerial skill as a fixed effect and we examine the relationship between the number of points earned in league matches and the club’s wage bill, transfer spending, and the extent to which they were hit by absent players through injuries, suspensions or unavailability. We next implement a bootstrapping approach to generate a simulated distribution of average points that could have taken place after the impact of the manager has been removed. The findings suggest that there are a considerable number of highly skilled managers but also several who perform below expectations. The paper proceeds to illustrate how the approach adopted could be used to determine the optimal time for a club to part company with its manager. We are able to identify in advance several managers who the analysis suggests could have been fired earlier and others whose sackings were hard to justify based on their performances

Time-varying price discovery in the eighteenth century: empirical evidence from the London and Amsterdam stock markets

This paper examines the time-varying nature of price discovery in eighteenth century cross-listed stocks. Specifically, we investigate how quickly news is reflected in prices for two of the great moneyed com- panies, the Bank of England and the East India Company, over the period 1723 to 1794. These British companies were cross-listed on the London and Amsterdam stock exchange and news between the capitals flowed mainly via the use of boats that transported mail. We examine in detail the historical context sur- rounding the defining events of the period, and use these as a guide to how the data should be analysed. We show that both trading venues contributed to price discovery, and although the London venue was more important for these stocks, its importance varies over time