Constructing Genuine Savings Indicators for Ireland, 1995-2005

In this paper we compute the genuine savings indicators for the Republic of Ireland over the period 1995-2005. We expand and improve existing World Bank‘s estimates by: a) using data collected from official Irish sources; b) employing the net present value method to assess resource depreciation; c) including external costs from SO2 and NOx emissions; and d) estimating human capital accumulation using the returns to education. We also perform a sensitivity analysis to check the robustness of our estimates to different assumptions and parameters. Our estimates are consistently smaller than the World Bank‘s and negative in the first years of the period considered

Grammar schools have a long history of being dominated by middle-class children

First paragraph: Signals that Theresa May is in favour of relaxing rules banning the creation of new selective grammar schools in England have provoked robust attacks from opponents of the plan. This included the government’s social mobility tsar Alan Milburn, a former minister in the Labour government that introduced the ban, who said it risked creating an “us and them divide” in the education system. Access this article on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/grammar-schools-have-a-long-history-of-being-dominated-by-middle-class-children-6419

Date of birth and selective schooling: Some lessons from the 1944 education reforms in England and Wales

We compare the probabilities of selective (grammar) school entry in England and Wales before and after the 1944 Education Act. The Act had direct and indirect influences on the costs of grammar education and on entry‐exam coverage, design and marking methodology. Post‐1944, grammar school entry among children born in the middle of the school year improved considerably. We argue that age‐adjusted group standardized testing was an important contributory factor. The youngest pupils remained significantly disadvantaged. We produce evidence that this is consistent with the practice of streaming (tracking) junior school children at age 7 into classes delineated by average ability

Policy Labels and Investment Decision-making

Much attention in recent years has turned to the potential of behavioural insights to improve the performance of government policy. One behavioural concept of interest is the effect of a cash transfer label on how the transfer is spent. The Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) is a labelled cash transfer to offset the costs of keeping older households warm in the winter. Previous research has shown that households spend a higher proportion of the WFP on energy expenditures due to its label (Beatty et al., 2011). If households interpret the WFP as money for their energy bills, it may reduce their willingness to undertake investments which help achieving the same goal, such as the adoption of renewable energy technologies. In this paper we show that the WFP has distortionary effects on the renewable technology market. Using the sharp eligibility criteria of the WFP in a Regression Discontinuity Design, this analysis finds a reduction in the propensity to install renewable energy technologies of around 2.7 percentage points due to the WFP. This is a considerable number. It implies that 62% of households (whose oldest member turns 60) would have invested in renewable energy but refrain to do so after receiving the WFP. This analysis suggests that the labelling effect spreads to products related to the labelled good. In this case, households use too much energy from sources which generate pollution and too little from relatively cleaner technologies

Green Hypocrisy?: Environmental Attitudes and Residential Space Heating Expenditure

In the UK, the largest proportion of household energy use is for space heating. Popular media make claims of a green hypocrisy: groups which have the strongest attitude towards the environment have the highest emissions. This study examines whether environmental attitudes and behaviours are associated with space heating energy use using data from the British Household Panel Survey. Results find that environmentally friendly attitudes generally do not lead to lower heating expenditures though environmentally friendly behaviours are associated with lower heating expenditure. Also, the effect of these attitudes and behaviours do not change as income increase

Proof of concept that requiring energy labels for dwellings can induce retrofitting

How to induce households to install energy efficient technology remains a puzzle. Could an energy labeling requirement for residential real estate help? We propose that the salient color-letter grades on the English Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) served as targets, motivating vendors to invest in energy efficiency. To test our hypothesis we look to a random sample of over 16,000 homes in England. In the post-EPC data we find a cluster of homes with energy efficiency scores just above the D-grade threshold. This cluster was not present prior to the requirement, replicates in an independently-drawn random sample and is significantly larger amongst properties that can be identified as treated by the EPC requirement. We conclude that the EPC requirement induced investment, and hence that energy efficiency labels have potential to green the housing stock. We infer from our analysis how the design of the EPC could be altered to motivate greater investment in energy efficiency

Who gained from the introduction of free universal secondary education in England and Wales?

This paper investigates the introduction of free universal secondary education in England and Wales in 1944. It focuses on its effects in relation to a prime long-term goal of pre-war Boards of Education. This was to open secondary school education to children of all social backgrounds on equal terms. Adopting a difference-in-difference estimation approach, we do not find any evidence that boys and girls from less well-off home backgrounds displayed improved chances of attending selective secondary schools. Nor, for the most part, did they show increased probabilities of gaining formal school qualifications. One possible exception in this latter respect relates to boys with unskilled fathers

Who gained from the introduction of free universal secondary education in England and Wales?

This paper investigates the introduction of free universal secondary education in England and Wales in 1944. It focuses on its effects in relation to a prime long-term goal of pre-war Boards of Education. This was to open secondary school education to children of all social backgrounds on equal terms. Adopting a difference-in-difference estimation approach, we do not find any evidence that boys and girls from less well-off home backgrounds displayed improved chances of attending selective secondary schools. Nor, for the most part, did they show increased probabilities of gaining formal school qualifications. One possible exception in this latter respect relates to boys with unskilled fathers

Date of birth, family background, and the 11 plus exam: short- and long-term consequences of the 1944 secondary education reforms in England and Wales

Research into socio-economic impacts of the 1944 Education Act in England and Wales has been considerable. We concentrate on its two most fundamental innovations. First, it provided free universal secondary education. Second, state-funded pupils were placed into grammar schools or technical schools or secondary modern schools depending on IQ tests at age 11. The secondary modern school pupils experienced relatively poor educational opportunities. This tripartite system dominated secondary education from 1947 to 1964. For this period, we use the British Household Panel Survey to investigate the influences of date of birth and family background on (a) the probability of attending grammar or technical schools, (b) the attainment of post-school qualifications, (c) the longer-term labour market outcomes as represented by job status and earnings. We link results to research into the effects of increasing the school minimum leaving age from 14 to 15, also introduced under the 1944 Act

Measuring the Local Opportunity Costs of Conservation: A Provision Point Mechanism for Willingness-to-Accept

Protected areas are employed world-wide as a means of conserving biodiversity. Unfortunately, restricting access to such areas imposes opportunity costs on local people who have traditionally relied on access to obtain resources such as fuelwood and bushmeat. We use contingent valuation to estimate the local benefits forgone from loss of access to a number of protected area types in Uganda. Methodologically, we innovate by implementing a "provision point" mechanism to estimate Willingness to Accept compensation (WTA) for loss of access to protected areas. We show that the provision point reduces mean WTA by a significant degree