Interregional migration 'wage premia': the case of creative and science and technology graduates in the UK

We analyze the migration behavior of graduates from UK universities with a focus on the salary benefits they receive from the migration process. We focus on sequential interregional migration and specifically examine the case of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Creative subject graduates. Our analysis differs from previous studies in that it accounts explicitly for migrant selectivity through propensity score matching, and it also classifies graduates into different migration behavior categories. Graduates were classified according to their sequential migration behavior first from their pre-university domicile to university and then from university to first job post-graduation. Our results show that ‘repeat migration’, as expected, is associated with the highest wage premium (around 15%). Other migration behaviors are also advantageous although this varies across different types of graduates. Creative graduates, for instance, do not benefit much from migration behaviors other than repeat migration. STEM graduates, on the contrary, benefit from both late migration and staying in the university area to work.

Measuring European property investment performance: comparing different approaches

Purpose – Price indices for commercial real estate markets are difficult to construct because assets are heterogeneous, they are spatially dispersed and they are infrequently traded. Appraisal-based indices are one response to these problems, but may understate volatility or fail to capture turning points in a timely manner. This paper estimates “transaction linked indices” for major European markets to see whether these offer a different perspective on market performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The assessed value method is used to construct the indices. This has been recently applied to commercial real estate datasets in the USA and UK. The underlying data comprise appraisals and sale prices for assets monitored by Investment Property Databank (IPD). The indices are compared to appraisal-based series for the countries concerned for Q4 2001 to Q4 2012. Findings – Transaction linked indices show stronger growth and sharper declines over the course of the cycle, but they do not notably lead their appraisal-based counterparts. They are typically two to four times more volatile. Research limitations/implications – Only country-level indicators can be constructed in many cases owing to low trading volumes in the period studied, and this same issue prevented sample selection bias from being analysed in depth. Originality/value – Discussion of the utility of transaction-based price indicators is extended to European commercial real estate markets. The indicators offer alternative estimates of real estate market volatility that may be useful in asset allocation and risk modelling, including in a regulatory context.

Agricultural commodity markets : reference point for the real value of a currency

Using monthly time-series data 1999-2013, the paper shows that markets for agricultural commodities provide a yardstick for real purchasing power, and thus a reference point for the real value of fiat currencies. The daily need for each adult to consume about 2800 food calories is universal; data from FAO food balance sheets confirm that the world basket of food consumed daily is non-volatile in comparison to the volatility of currency exchange rates, and so the replacement cost of food consumed provides a consistent indicator of economic value. Food commodities are storable for short periods, but ultimately perishable, and this exerts continual pressure for markets to clear in the short term; moreover, food calories can be obtained from a very large range of foodstuffs, and so most households are able to use arbitrage to select a near optimal weighting of quantities purchased. The paper proposes an original method to enable a standard of value to be established, definable in physical units on the basis of actual worldwide consumption of food goods, with an illustration of the method.