COVID-19 and higher education: some of the effects on students and institutions and how to alleviate them

Monica Langella discusses some potential negative effects of the pandemic on higher education, particularly those pertaining to online assessment, university offers, and labour market outcomes. She offers evidence-based suggestions for how these impacts may be mitigated

What local socio-economic conditions can tell us about the patterns of support in Italy's election

The 2018 Italian election had a notable geographic split in voting behaviour, with Lega having more support in the north of the country and the Five Star Movement proving more successful in the south. Monica Langella digs deeper into the regional variations underpinning the result by carrying out an analysis of the link between local socio-economic factors and support for the country's four main parties

Who voted Leave: the characteristics of individuals mattered, but so did those of local areas

Individual demographics had a huge effect in determining the outcome of the referendum, but the characteristics of local areas mattered as well, explain Monica Langella and Alan Manning. Immigration, the decline in manufacturing and in other sectors, as well as politics, all played an important role in deciding the outcome

Local agglomeration, entrepreneurship and the 2008 recession: evidence from Italian industrial districts

We investigate whether the impact of recessions on entrepreneurship is affected by the presence of industrial districts, a source of local agglomeration economies. Using Italian Labour Force quarterly data from 2006 to 2011 and a "difference-in-differences" approach, we show that the share of entrepreneurs in local labour markets where industrial districts are present has declined more than in comparable areas after the beginning of the 2008 recession. The estimated negative differential effect ranges between 4.8 and 7.9 percent in absolute value. We examine alternative explanations - including differences in industrial specialisation and composition, access to credit propensity, exports, population density and the composition of talents - and conclude that our result is consistent with the intense social interactions typical of industrial districts, acting as a multiplier that amplifies the response to shocks

Residential mobility and unemployment in the UK

The UK has suffered from persistent spatial differences in unemployment rates for many decades. A low responsiveness of internal migration to unemployment is often argued to be an important cause of this problem. This paper uses UK census data to investigate how unemployment affects residential mobility using very small areas as potential destinations and origins and four decades of data. It finds that both inand out-migration are affected by unemployment, although the effect on in-migration appears to be stronger - but also that there is a very high ‘cost of distance’ so most moves are very local. Using individual longitudinal data we show that the young and the better educated have a lower cost of distance but that sensitivity to unemployment shows much less variability across groups

The measure of monopsony

There has been increasing interest in recent years in monopsony in labour market. This paper discusses how we can measure monopsony power combining insights from models based on both frictions and idiosyncrasies. It presents some evidence from the UK and the US about how monopsony power varies across the wage distribution within markets, over the business cycle and over time

Diversity and neighbourhood satisfaction

This article investigates the impact of ethnic diversity on individuals' satisfaction with their neighbourhoods. It uses panel data and a variety of empirical methods to control for potential endogeneity of diversity and of location choices. We find that a higher white share raises overall satisfaction with the neighbourhood in our (overwhelming white) sample, but has no significant impact on generalised trust or other commonly used measures of social capital. We suggest that part of the impact of diversity on overall neighbourhood satisfaction may be through an effect on fear of crime, though we find no effect on actual crime

Residential mobility and unemployment in the UK

The UK has suffered from persistent spatial differences in unemployment rates for many decades. A low responsiveness of internal migration to unemployment is often argued to be an important cause of this problem. This paper uses UK census data to investigate how unemployment affects residential mobility using small areas as potential destinations and origins and four decades of data. It finds that both in- and out-migration are affected by local unemployment - but also that there is a very high ‘cost of distance’, so most moves are very local. We complement the study with individual longitudinal data to analyse individual heterogeneities in mobility. We show that elasticities to local unemployment are different across people with different characteristics. For instance, people who are better educated are more sensitive, the same applies to homeowners. Ethnic minorities are on average less sensitive to local unemployment rates and tend to end up in higher unemployment areas when moving

Income and the desire to migrate

We analyse the role of household and country-level personal income in explaining both the desire to emigrate and the desired destination country. We use data from the Gallup World Poll and applications to the US Diversity Visa Program. We find that higher GDP per capita at destination is strongly associated with a higher desire to move to that country. We do not find strong support for the selection hypothesis that people want to move to countries with a higher return to their level of education. On emigration, we find that both personal income and aggregate income matter. In poorer countries richer people are more likely to want to emigrate, while the opposite is true in richer countries. In looking at the impact of origin country income on the desire to emigrate, we find little evidence for the upward part of Zelinsky's 'hump-shape' migration transition hypothesis