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.

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 analyse the interaction between a school and an employer. Students with disadvantaged background are penalised compared to other students: they receive less teaching and/or are less likely to be hired. A surprising result is that policy aiming to subsidise education for disadvantaged students might in fact decrease their job opportunities.

Students' Social Origins and Targeted Grade Inflation

Grade inflation or soft grading is a common feature of the educational systems of many countries. In this paper I analyse grade inflation in a setting in which students differ in social background, and the grading policy can be targeted according to student type. I consider a signalling game where firms decide whether to hire students and their salary after observing their grades and social background, a university can inflate grades, when students decide whether to attend university. A targeted grade inflation may have redistributive effects by raising the salary of students with disadvantaged social background, if their grades are less inflated than other students'.

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.

How do Performance Targets Affect Future Performance by Students and Schools?

The paper examines whether meeting performance targets in tests at school has an effeect on students' subsequent achievement in education and the take-up by schools of financial support from the government for students. We build a theoretical model to describe the channels through which students' belief of their ability, as proxied by previous performance in tests, affect their current effort in preparing for a test, and how previous performance affects the effort in teaching by a school. We find that an increase in the performance target in the first test has an ambiguous effect on the effort exerted for the second test. A higher performance target in the current test increases the effort of low-ability students and teaching effort for low ability students, while it has an ambiguous effect on high ability ones. Finally, an increase in government funding per student increases the effort by students.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Firms Ability to Collude

We examine a duopoly with polluting production where firms adopt a form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to define their objective functions. Our analysis focusses on the bearings of CSR on collusion over an infinite horizon, sustained by either grim trigger strategies or optimal punishments. Our results suggest that assigning a weight to consumer surplus has a pro-competitive e¤ect under both full and partial collusion. Conversely, a higher impact of productivity on pollution has an anti-competitive effect under partial collusion, while exerting no effect under full collusion. Under partial collusion, the analysis of the isoquant map of the cartel reveals that complementarity arises between the two weights.

The Environmental Impact of Bertrand and Cournot Duopolies. A Cautionary Note

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.

On the Stability of Mixed Oligopoly Equilibria with CSR Firms

This paper examines the stability conditions of the equilibria in a market where profit-maximising and CSR firms coexist in the presence of an environmental externality. An equilibrium in mixed duopoly is stable for low impact of productivity on pollution and high CSR sensitivity to consumer surplus. In addition, a mixed oligopoly equilibrium is stable if the number of CSR is sufficiently low.

Low-Quality Leadership in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly with Cournot Competition

We model a vertically differentiated duopoly with quantity-setting firms as an extended game in which firms noncooperatively choose the timing of moves at the quality stage, to show that at the subgame perfect equilibrium sequential play obtains, with the low-quality firm taking the leader's role.

The Dynamics of Disease in a Regulated Vertically Differentiated Health System

We build up a differential game to investigate the interplay between the quality of health care and the presence of an evolving disease in a duopoly where patients are heterogeneous along the income dimension. We prove unicity, stability and perfection of the open-loop Nash solution. Moreover, we identify the admissible parameter region wherein price regulation achieves the twofold objectives of ensuring cares to all patients and eradicating the disease.