Increasing school choice: sustainability paradox

The UK government wants school travel to be safer, healthier and more environmentally friendly-with more pupils walking and cycling. In addition in 2005, it published the 14-19 Education and Skills White Paper. One of the key aims of the paper was to improve school choice for all pupils. This is to be achieved by giving more choice to disadvantaged children; and promoting fair admissions in order to give parents access to a wider range of schools. Allowing parents to look further than their local catchment area school is likely to result in greater numbers of children traveling longer distances. Therefore, as this paper illustrates, if school choice is really to be open to all, school transport must be included as part of the tool kit promoting choice and targeted at those who need it most.

Inflation targeting and the consistency of monetary policy decisions in Mexico: an empirical analysis with discrete choice models

This paper examines the nature of monetary policy decisions in Mexico using discrete choice models applied to the Central Bank's explicit monetary policy instrument. We find that monetary policy adjustments in Mexico have been strongly consistent with the CB's inflation targeting strategy. We also find evidence that monetary policy responds in a forward-looking manner to deviations of inflation from the target and that observed policy adjustments exhibit asymmetric features, with stronger responses to positive than to negative deviations of inflation from the target and a greater likelihood of policy persistence during periods when monetary policy is tightened, compared with periods when policy is loosened.

Pure higher-order effects in the portfolio choice model

This paper examines the effects of higher-order risk attitudes and statistical moments on the optimal allocation of risky assets within the standard portfolio choice model. We derive the expressions for the optimal proportion of wealth invested in the risky asset to show they are functions of portfolio returns third- and fourth-order moments as well as on the investor’s risk preferences of prudence and temperance. We illustrate the relative importance that the introduction of those higher-order effects have in the decision of expected utility maximizers using data for the US.