Caroline Elliott

Using a personal response system in economics teaching

This paper offers a brief introduction to a Personal Response System that can be used in group-teaching scenarios, reporting the results of a trial using the technology in a second-year undergraduate Microeconomics Principles course. Advantages and disadvantages of the technology are discussed, and the possibilities for using this technology more widely are explored.

Who's publishing who? The national composition of contributors to some core US and European journals

Abstract This paper reports and discusses the results that emerged from an investigation into the national composition of contributors to leading US and European economics journals.

A Cointegration Analysis of Advertising and Sales Data

It is argued that the nature of the industry levelrelationship between advertising and sales can givesome indication of the form of competition in anindustry. Hence, this paper examines whether there isa long-run, stable, equilibrium relationship betweenadvertising and sales for food and soft drinksindustries. Results suggest that the variables arenon-stationary, but do not contain seasonal unitroots. Cointegration is not identified between softdrinks industry advertising and sales, which, togetherwith the results of differenced variable regressions,suggests that rivalry between firms in this industrymay be intense.

The relationship between unemployment and crime

Various authors have tested for the presence of a relationship between unemployment and crime, employing time‐series or cross‐sectional data. However, little use has been made of the British Crime Survey. Consequently, in the present paper, we test for the presence of a relationship between male unemployment and crime, using regional and area‐level crime data from the 1992 British Crime Survey, with socio‐economic and demographic data being taken from the 1991 census. Use of these data sets allows us to look at four differing measures of crime: we can study possible relationships between male unemployment and the incidence, and prevalence, of both property and personal crimes. Area‐level data are also employed to test more ecological explanations of spatial crime patterns.

Exploring the relationship between unemployment and property crime

Existing economic studies have revealed conflicting evidence regarding the relationship between unemployment and crime. In this paper we argue that the conflicting evidence that has appeared in previous studies reflects inadequate statistical analysis. Specifically, we argue that insufficient attention has been devoted to questions of functional form. Employing the Box-Cox flexible functional form approach we report evidence to suggest that once the correct functional form of the variables is utilized, a significant positive relationship between male unemployment and property crime is identified, this having fundamental implications for government policy in the fight against crime.

Credible regulatory threats

Abstract As competition emerges in parts of utility industries and utility regulation policy is reviewed, it is useful to examine alternative forms of regulation that may be implemented. When hit and run entry is believed to be a non-credible threat, potential entry may not constrain incumbent firms’ pricing and production decisions. This paper proposes that the credible threat of intervention by a regulator may impact upon incumbent firms’ decisions. Empirical evidence from the English and Welsh electricity pool market is investigated to discover whether the threat of regulator intervention may have influenced the pricing strategies of the dominant firms in this market.

Threat-Based Competition Policy

This note suggests a link between the theory of contestable markets and competition policy. We propose that in the absence of potential hit and run entrants into an industry the behaviour of a firm may be constrained by the fear of intervention by the competition authorities. Hence, in periods in which hit and run entry is believed to be a non-credible threat, the competition authorities can affect a firms behaviour by the threat of intervention, as well as by intervention itself. Requirements for the successful use of threat-based competition policy are identified, and its potential benefits are outlined.

Regulatory Conflict? Environmental and Economic Regulation of Electricity Generation

Implementation of policies aimed at reducing atmospheric emissions has drawn attention to the need to integrate policies aimed at protection of the environment into other policy areas such as energy. In this paper we are concerned with the interaction of environmental policies aimed at reducing pollution, and economic policies aimed at reducing market power, in the electricity generation industry. While our analysis focuses on the post privatisation experiences in England and Wales, the analysis is intended to be of a wider applicability. In a theoretical model we find that there are welfare gains to be made from a move from the current non-cooperative regulatory regime to co-operative regulation between the environmental and economic regulators - a result that holds for the alternative environmental policies of a technology standard and an emissions tax.

Assessing the Representativeness of the 1992 British Crime Survey: The Impact of Sampling Error and Response Biases

The paper highlights the importance of the representativeness of survey samples, using the 1992 British Crime Survey as an example. The success with which different demographic characteristics are represented in the survey sample is addressed by comparison to the 1991 Census Small Area Statistics for England and Wales. In addition, biases associated with different response rates in different areas are addressed, and given the nature of the survey, the impact of an areas crime rate on its response rate is also analysed. Finally, regression modelling is used to identify whether the same variables have explanatory power in explaining differences in crime rate and response rate.

Evaluating the Use of Lecture Capture Using a Revealed Preference Approach.

This article discusses the introduction of lecture capture technology on a large undergraduate module with diverse student cohorts. The literature has, so far, relied on surveying students to discover their use of the technology or attempted to quantify the impact of watching lecture recordings on assessment performance. Alternatively, the principal contribution of this article is an evaluation of the use of the recorded lectures using a revealed preference approach. Specifically, we identify to what extent students watched lecture recordings, rather than simply claimed to watch them, when asked to provide comments on the technology. Data indicate the number of distinct students who watched recordings, the frequency with which they watched recordings, the average length of viewings as well as the time of the day when lectures were viewed. We monitored viewings over two academic years, identifying ‘spikes’ in the number of viewings in the days before tests, as well as regularities in the viewing patterns across the 2 years. We analyse the data to assess the extent to which students used the recordings, how and when they watched the recordings. We conclude that the students value lecture recordings, making more extensive use of the recordings than has been identified in the literature, to date. Ultimately, lecture recordings are suggested to offer valuable support for students’ independent study.