An increase over time in the proportion of young people obtaining a degree is likely to impact on the relative ability compositions (i) of graduates and non-graduates and (ii) across graduates with different classes of degree award. In a signalling framework, we examine the implications of this...

We consider the problem of targeting benefits when the incomes of families are not accurately observable by the public authorities. By income uncertainty it is meant that the decision-maker cannot ascertain an applicant's income, but that he can assign probabilities with respect to the level of...

We study the impact of private ownership, incentive pay and local development objectives on university licensing performance. We develop and test a simple contracting model of technology licensing offices, using new survey information together with panel data on U.S. universities for 1995-99. We...

We estimate semiparametric Engel curves for rural Pakistan using a large household survey. This allows us to obtain consistent estimates of the effects of household size and composition on consumption patterns even when these demographic variables are correlated with an unknown function of...

In the process of China's foreign exchange reform, the so-called swap market was a key element. Despite the problems it caused, notably those associated with a dual exchange rate, the paper argues that the swap market proved to be a useful transition mechanism for China's foreign exchange...

We study the evolution of sectoral employment and labor cost in eleven European countries in the last two decades. Our statistical approach consists in decomposing for country, industry and temporal effects. Virtual economies are constructed by filtering country effects. We find that sectoral...

This paper uses newspaper articles to construct an account of the meteoric rise and eventual fall from grace of Takafumi Horie, a Japanese Internet entrepreneur. This trajectory is explored through a qualitative methodology that analyses the content of articles in international newspapers...