Manchester School最新文献

We use a change in Iceland's education system as a natural experiment to measure the effect of years spent in upper-secondary school on subsequent first-year outcomes at university. The duration of Iceland's upper-secondary education was shortened by 1 year through compression of the curriculum. We find that shorter upper-secondary education, 3 years instead of the previous four, leads to first-year university students completing fewer credits, getting a lower average grade in completed courses, and being more likely to drop out. We find that this negative effect of the reform disproportionately affected the academic performance of male students and those who previously demonstrated weaker academic abilities, thus increasing academic disparities.

This paper has examined whether the Duty-Free and Quota-Free (DFQF) market access preference schemes provided by Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to Least developed countries (LDCs) have been instrumental in reducing income inequality and poverty in these countries. The analysis has used the entropy balancing method over an unbalanced panel dataset of 36 LDCs (treatment group) and 19 countries in the control group, with data spanning the period 1997–2018. The feasible generalized least squares, the within fixed effects and the Seemingly Unrelated Regression estimators have been employed to address empirically the question. The analysis has established that the DFQF schemes have genuinely been instrumental in reducing income inequality and poverty in LDCs, including to a greater extent in non-African LDCs than in African LDCs. These findings confirm the importance of the DFQF schemes for LDCs.

This paper constructs a competitive trade model involving countries in two distinct time zone locations. Our results suggest that geographical distance positively impact service trade, in contrast to its harmful nature for goods trade. These results are not in line with the traditional gravity arguments of international trade. Our model also reveals an intriguing relationship: an increase in distance between trading nations results in higher skilled wages and lower rent in case of service trade, while goods trade yields the opposite effect. We then connect distance with delaying cost and find the effects of delaying cost on trade and factor prices. We further extend our basic model to introduce informal sector and government manufacturing sector. Despite these additions, the consistency in the effects of distance on factor prices and output persists.

Investigating gold's safe-haven status is crucial to stabilising energy and cryptocurrency markets. To capture the dynamic relationships between energy-related uncertainty (ERU), gold prices (GP), and cryptocurrency policy uncertainty (CPOU), this study employs the TVP-SV-VAR methodology. Through quantitative analysis, we find ERU has favourable and unfavourable effects on GP. The favourable impact underscores gold's safe-haven role against energy market uncertainty. At the same time, the negative impact contradicts this view and theoretical models, likely due to the U.S. dollar's value and gold's hedging performance against other uncertainties. CPOU, however, positively impacts GP, supporting gold's safe-haven characteristics against uncertainty in the cryptocurrency market and aligning with theoretical predictions. Gold's safe-haven status in the cryptocurrency market is comparably more consistent but slightly less significant. Additionally, this study validates the findings by substituting CPOU with cryptocurrency price uncertainty (CPRU), confirming their robustness. Given the high volatility in energy and cryptocurrency markets, this article offers valuable insights for authorities to maximise profits and ensure stable growth.

This paper analyzes the relationships among intergenerational mobility, human capital and public expenditure. We propose to incorporate the heterogeneous effects of public expenditure into a standard overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation. We show that these heterogeneous effects alter the shape of the relationships among intergenerational mobility, human capital and public expenditure in a way that has new policy implications. First, intergenerational mobility depends on the heterogeneous effects of public expenditure. Second, the relationship between public expenditure and intergenerational mobility can be either positive or negative. Third, public expenditure produces a non-monotonic effect on human capital. We find that when fiscal policy increases intergenerational mobility, the level of human capital may decrease. The government may therefore face a trade-off between fostering intergenerational mobility and increasing the level of human capital through public expenditure.