NHS competition: bad blogging etc (part II)

I wrote yesterday about misleading criticism of LSE research on NHS competition. In reponse to a couple of comments on my piece, one of the authors of the research (Steve Gibbons, SERC's research director) posted a reply. I thought his reply would be of general interest (particularly regarding their motivation for conducting the research which is discuss towards the end of the comment) and deserved a re-post

The effects of resources across school phases: a summary of recent evidence

This report provides an overview and discussion of the past decade of academic evidence on the causal effects of resources in schooling on students’ outcomes. Early evidence lacked good strategies for estimating the effects of schools resources, leading many people to conclude that spending more on schools had no effect. More recent evidence using better research designs finds that resources do matter, but the range of estimates of the impacts is quite wide. The review devotes special attention to differences across the early years, primary and secondary phases. Theoretical work has indicated that interventions early in a child's life may be more productive than interventions later on. However, although there are more examples of good quality studies on primary schooling, the existing body of empirical work does not lead to a conclusive case in favour of early interventions

Valuing School Quality Using Boundary Discontinuities

Existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. However, higher test scores could signal better quality teaching and academic value-added, or higher ability, sought-after intakes. In our research, we show decisively that value-added drives households' demand for good schooling. However, prior achievement - linked to the background of children in school - also matters. In order to identify these effects, we improve the boundary discontinuity regression methodology by matching identical properties across admissions authority boundaries; by allowing for boundary effects and spatial trends; by re-weighting our data towards transactions that are closest to district boundaries; by eliminating boundaries that coincide with major geographical features; and by submitting our estimates to a number of novel falsification tests. Our results survive this battery of experiments and show that a one-standard deviation change in either school average value-added or prior achievement raises prices by around 3%.House prices, school quality, boundary discontinuities

The amenity value of English nature: a hedonic price approach

Using a hedonic property value price approach, we estimate the amenity value associated with proximity to habitats, designated areas, domestic gardens and other natural amenities in England. There is a long tradition of studies looking at the effect of a wide range of environmental amenities and disamenities on property prices. But, to our knowledge, this is the first nationwide study of the value of proximity to a large number of natural amenities in England. We analysed 1 million housing transactions over 1996- 2008 and considered a large number of environmental characteristics. Results reveal that the effects of many of these environmental variables are highly statistically significant, and are quite large in economic magnitude. Gardens, green space and areas of water within the census ward all attract a considerable positive price premium. There is also a strong positive effect from freshwater and flood plain locations, broadleaved woodland, coniferous woodland and enclosed farmland. Increasing distance to natural amenities such as rivers, National parks and National Trust sites is unambiguously associated with a fall in house prices. Our preferred regression specifications control for unobserved labour market and other geographical factors using Travel to Work Area fixed effects, and the estimates are fairly insensitive to changes in specification and sample. This provides some reassurance that the hedonic price results provide a useful representation of the values attached to proximity to environmental amenities in England. Overall, we conclude that the house market in England reveals substantial amenity value attached to a number of habitats, designations, private gardens and local environmental amenities

Is Britain Pulling Apart? Area Disparities in Employment, Education and Crime

This paper explores the changing extent of concentration worklessness and deprivation in Britains communities over the last twenty years and seeks to identify what shapes patterns of relative affluence and deprivation. The paper goes on to explore the evidence that there are lasting consequences from concentrated deprivation for the residents, including children. The paper address issues of employment, educational outcomes and crime victimisation. Looking at the available evidence from the UK and abroad, the evidence suggests that concentrated deprivation has little effect on employment opportunities, (e.g. moving people to more affluent neighbourhoods would make little difference), has modest effects on childrens educational outcomes and propensity to get involved in deviant behaviours but substantial effects on crime victimisation. The paper then concludes on what policy agendas could be developed to address concentrated deprivation and above all its consequences on residents outcomes.neighbourhoods, employment, education, crime

Do student satisfaction ratings affect university choices? New evidence about the National Student Survey

Posted by Steve Gibbons, LSE and SERC The season is here when next year’s school leavers start filling in their UCAS forms and applying to university. Yet, as any of us who know someone in this position will agree, picking a university is not always easy. For most subject areas, there are a large number of universities to choose from, and making a choice can involve a lot of research

Everybody needs good neighbours?

Posted by Steve Gibbons, LSE and SERC New neighbours have moved in to your street. Should you worry about the effect their children will have on yours? Will they be a good influence or bad? If you had read a lot of the past research on so called ‘neighbourhood effects’ you might be very worried. These studies often show a correlation between the kind of neighbours a child grows up with, and their subsequent behaviours and educational achievement. These findings have been very influential, for example in motivating policy to encourage mixed communities

Windfarms and house prices

[by Dr Steve Gibbons] News this morning suggests that communities near new wind-farm developments could be in for some form of compensation, through lower electricity prices or other payment schemes. The BBC reports that the compensation could be worth as much as £100,000 per community http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22791815. This is probably welcome news for residents potentially affected by wind-farm developments, although provisional findings from on-going research suggests that this level of compensation may not cover the costs involved, in terms of environmental, health and other impacts. I find that an operational wind farm reduces housing prices by around 7% up to 5km from the wind farm site. Some rough calculations based on these estimates suggest that the implied social costs on the local community (within 5km) amounts to about £80 million per operational wind farm, or about £500 per household per year