COVID-19 Impacts on Destitution in the UK. National Institute Economic Review, Vol 253 , August 2020 , p. 77-85.
(with A. Bhattacharjee)
We use microsimulation combined with a model of the Covid-19 impacts on individuals and households to obtain projections of households in destitution in the United Kingdom. The projections are estimated at two levels: aggregate quarterly for the UK, for all quarters of 2020; and annual for 2020 differentiated by region, sector and household demographics. At the aggregate level, destitution is projected to be about three times higher than the non-Covid counterfactual level in 2020Q2, as well as substantially higher than the non-Covid case for the remainder of the year. This increased destitution is initially largely due to the effect on the self-employed, and as the Furlough scheme is drawn down, also on the unemployed. Impacts upon different regions and sectors vary widely, and so do variations across different household types. The sectors particularly affected are construction and manufacturing, while London and its closely connected regions (South East and the Midlands) are most severely affected. Single adult households suffer the most, and the adverse effects increase with number of children in the household. That the effects upon youth remain high is a particularly worrying sign, and very high increases in destitution are also projected for 25-54 year olds and the elderly (75 years and older). Further, severe adverse effects are projected for sections of society and the economy where multiple impacts are coincident. Robust and sustained mitigation measures are therefore required.
Peer Diversity, Classroom Performance and Educational Choices. Labour Economics, Vol 64, p. 1-21 , 101833.
(with A. Chevalier and I. E. Isphording)
We study the effect of ethno-linguistic classroom composition in college on performance, educational choices and post-graduation migration in a setting of quasi-random assignment to undergraduate seminars at a British university. English-speaking students are unaffected by classroom composition. For Non-English- speaking students greater linguistic diversity improves grades, and increases their interaction with English- speaking students. The effects of initial diversity on grades persist until the final year and are not driven by differences in specialisation. Avoiding segregation along language lines is key in providing education for an international student body.
Matching Efficiency and Heterogeneous Workers in the UK
The unemployment rate in the UK increased sharply from around 5% before the Great Recession to more than 8% in the second quarter of 2009, and remained persistently high for a period of over three years. An observed rightward shift in the Beveridge Curve suggests that the efficiency in matching labour market agents decreased during the Great Recession. This paper studies the changes in the labour market’s efficiency over the period between 2001 and 2015 in the UK, and decomposes various factors behind it using the standard aggregate matching function. Consistent with the findings for the US (Barnichon and Figura (2015)), I find that the UK labour market experienced a decrease in the matching efficiency during the Great Recession. Accounting for labour market segmentation and worker heterogeneity can explain a sizeable 38% of the unexplained movements in the matching efficiency over the period between 2001Q4 and 2014Q3.
Teacher Effects on Students’ Performance and Choices in Higher Education
In this paper, I examine the effects of linguistic differences between university teaching assistants on students’ performance in early and final years of their undergraduate degree. I also look at their longer-term choices and whether there are any effects on those from ethno-linguistic differences in TAs. Finally, I present the overview of the TA gender effects on students’ short and longer-term outcomes. Main findings suggest that in the short-run, non-English speaking students face lower performance outcomes as a result of being taught by a TA whose native language is other than English, however, the results vastly differ in the longer- run, suggesting that having a non-English speaking TA teaching students in early years of their studies, results in higher grades in their final year. These findings are not observed for English speaking students. I also find positive gender role model effects in the beginning of the studies. Females benefit from being taught by females and males perform better when taught by male TAs. This result disappears in the longer- run – the gender of teachers in first and second year of the undergraduate degree does not have any effect on final year outcomes.