Education Policy in the UK

Bildungspolitik, Hochschulreform, Großbritannien, Educational policy, Higher education reform, United Kingdom

What happened to the wages of men since the mid-1960s

The gap between rich and poor has increased dramatically over the last 25 years and the incomes of the bottom 10 per cent were no higher in 1991 than in 1967 (see Goodman and Webb (1994b, this issue)). Wages are an important part of household income and the trends in the dispersion of wages mirror very closely the trends in the dispersion of income. Knowing the reasons for the changing structure of the wage distribution is thus crucial to an understanding of the trends in overall household income.

Market regulation and firm performance: the case of smoking bans in the UK

This paper analyzes the effects of a ban on smoking in public places upon firms and consumers. It presents a theoretical model and tests its predictions using unique data from before and after the introduction of smoking bans in the UK. Cigarette smoke is a public bad, and smokers and non-smokers differ in their valuation of smoke-free amenities. Consumer heterogeneity implies that the market equilibrium may result in too much uniformity, whereas social optimality requires a mix of smoking and non-smoking pubs (which can be operationalized via licensing). If the market equilibrium has almost all pubs permitting smoking (as is the case in the data) then a blanket ban reduces pub sales, profits, and consumer welfare. We collect survey data from public houses and find that the Scottish smoking ban (introduced in March 2006) reduced pub sales and harmed medium run profitability. An event study analysis of the stock market performance of pub-holding companies corroborates the negative effects of the smoking ban on firm performance.Regulation; smoking ban; market provision of quality; sales; prices; profitability; stock market performance.

The Crime Reducing Effect of Education

In this paper, we study the crime reducing potential of education, presenting causal statistical estimates based upon a law that changed the compulsory school leaving age in England and Wales. We frame the analysis in a regression-discontinuity setting and uncover significant decreases in property crime from reductions in the proportion of people with no educational qualifications and increases in the age of leaving school that resulted from the change in the law. The findings show that improving education can yield significant social benefits and can be a key policy tool in the drive to reduce crime

Designing a Library of Lived Experience for Mental Health (LoLEM): Protocol for integrating a realist synthesis and Experience Based Codesign approach

Introduction: People with lived expertise in managing mental health challenges can be an important source of knowledge and support for other people facing similar challenges, and for carers to learn how best to help. However, opportunities for sharing lived expertise are limited. Living libraries support people with lived expertise to be ‘living books’, sharing their experiences in dialogue with ‘readers’ who can ask questions. Living libraries have been piloted worldwide in health-related contexts but without a clear model of how they work or rigorous evaluation of their impacts. We aim to develop a programme theory about how a living library could be used to improve mental health outcomes, using this theory to codesign an implementation guide that can be evaluated across different contexts.Methods and analysis: We will use a novel integration of realist synthesis and experience-based codesign (EBCD) to produce a programme theory about how living libraries work and a theory and experience informed guide to establishing a library of lived experience for mental health (LoLEM). Two workstreams will run concurrently: (1) a realist synthesis of literature on living libraries, combined with stakeholder interviews, will produce several programme theories; theories will be developed collaboratively with an expert advisory group of stakeholders who have hosted or taken part in a living library and will form our initial analysis framework; a systematic search will identify literature about living libraries; data will be coded into our analysis framework, and we will use retroductive reasoning to explain living libraries’ impacts across multiple contexts. Individual stakeholder interviews will help refine and test theories; (2) data from workstream 1 will inform 10 EBCD workshops with people with experience of managing mental health difficulties and health professionals to produce a LoLEM implementation guide; data from this process will also inform the theory in workstream 1.Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval was granted by Coventry and Warwick National Health Service Research Ethics Committee on 29 December 2021 (reference number 305975). The programme theory and implementation guide will be published as open access and shared widely through a knowledge exchange event, a study website, mental health provider and peer support networks, peer reviewed journals and a funders report.PROSPERO registration details CRD42022312789