Margaret Stevens

Margaret Stevens
Professor of Economics
Lincoln College
Head of Department
01865 271092
margaret.stevens@economics.ox.ac.uk

 

I am a Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford, and a Senior Research Fellow of Lincoln College. I have worked in Oxford since 1993, teaching microeconomics, labour economics, public economics and quantitative economics; from 2000 until 2016 I was the Tutorial Fellow in Economics at Lincoln College.  My research interests are mainly in labour economics, particularly equilibrium search and matching models, and their application to vocational training and other labour market policy questions. Other areas of interest are education, health and welfare policy.  I am involved in the CORE project, an international collaboration of university economists developing a new introductory economics curriculum for undergraduates.

 

Personal Site 

Executive Assistant: Sarah Morrish

CV

  • Are University Admissions Academically Fair?

    June 2016
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    Journal article
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    The Review of Economics and Statistics

  • UNEMPLOYMENT AND MARKET SIZE

    March 2014
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    Journal article
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    ECONOMIC JOURNAL
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  • Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series

    Human Capital and Competition: Strategic Complementarities in Firm-based Training

    November 2012
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    Working paper
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    Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
    Vocational training systems differ markedly between countries. A model of firm-based human capital investment predicts equilibria characterised by particular patterns of training and job-to-job mobility, consistent with observed cross-country differences. Incentives to invest in human capital are determined jointly with labour turnover and the intensity of competition between employers for skilled workers, and the dependence of labour market conditions on human capital leads to strategic complementarity between training decisions. Depending on the extent of market frictions and match heterogeneity, we may expect to see either equilibria characterised by general training, steep wage profiles and high mobility; or equilibria in which both general and specific investment may occur, but turnover is low and wage profiles are relatively flat. Multiple equilibria are possible, in which case high turnover equilibria generate higher welfare.
    Human capital, labor turnover, specific training, general training, search, matching
  • Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series

    Are University Admissions Academically Fair?

    June 2012
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    Working paper
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    Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
    High-profile universities often face public criticism for undermining academic merit and promoting social elitism/engineering through their admissions-process. In this paper, we develop an empirical test for whether access to selective universities is meritocratic. We assume that students who are better-qualified on standard observable indicators would on average, but not necessarily with certainty, appear academically stronger to admission-tutors based on characteristics observable to them but not us. This assumption can be used to reveal information about the sign and magnitude of differences in admission standards across demographic groups which are robust to omitted characteristics. Using admissions-data from a selective British university, we provide empirical support for our identifying assumptions and then apply our analysis to show that males and private school applicants face higher admission-standards, although application success-rates are equal across gender and school-type. Our methods are potentially useful for testing outcome-based fairness of other binary treatment decisions, such as mortgage approval, where eventual outcomes are observed for those who were treated.
    University admissions, affirmative action, economic efficiency, marginal admit, unobserved heterogeneity, threshold-crossing model, conditional stochastic dominance, partial identification
  • Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series

    Pandering Judges

    April 2008
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    Working paper
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    Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
    Tenured public officials such as judges are often thought to be indifferent to the concerns of the elctorate and, as a result, potentially lacking in discipline but unlikely to pander to public opinion. We investigate this proposition empirically using data on promotion decisions taken by senior English judges between 1985 and 2005. Throughout this period the popular view was one of ill-disciplined elitism: senior judges were alleged to be favouring candidates from elite backgrounds over their equally capable non-elite counterparts. We find no evidence of such ill-discipline; most of the unconditional difference in promotion prospects between the two groups can simply be explained by differences in promotion-relevant characteristics. However, exploiting an unexpected proposal to remove control over promotions from the judiciary, we do find evidence of pandering. When faced by the prospect of losing autonomy, senior judges began to favour non-elite candidates, as well as candidates who were unconnected to members of the promotion committee. Our finding that tenured public officials can display both the upsides and downsides of electoral accountability has implications for the literature on political agency, as well as recent constitutional reforms.
    Electoral Accountability, Judges, Promotion Decisions
  • Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series

    Unemployment, Participation and Market Size

    October 2007
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    Working paper
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    Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
    We construct an equilibrium random matching model of the labour market, with endogenous market participation and a general matching technology that allows for market size effects: the job-finding rate for workers and the incentives for participation change with the level of unemployment. In comparison to standard models with constant returns to scale in matching, agent behaviour is more complex - the model generates plausible joint dynamics of employment, unemployment and participation with heterogeneity in search behaviour for workers with different degrees of attachment to the labour market. Techniques are developed to reduce the dimensionality of the problem to establish local and global stability; a complicating factor is the possibility of multiple equilibria, welfare-ranked by market size. A Hosios-type condition internalises search externalities.
    Unemployment, Participation, Job Search, Matching Function, Returns to Scale, Multiple Equilibria, Stability, Coordination, Search Externalities
  • Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series

    The Impact of School Inputs on Student Performance: An Empirical Study of Private Schools in the United Kingdom

    February 2003
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    Working paper
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    Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
    In this article, we report the results of an empirical study of the impact of school inputs on pupils` performance in private (independent) schools in the United Kingdom. We use a new school-level panel dataset constructed from information provided by the Independent Schools Information Service (ISIS). We show a consistent negative relationship between the pupil-teacher ratio at a school and the average examination results at that school. Our estimates indicate that the relationship persists even when we are estimating added-value models conditional on previous exam results. The results are noteworthy in comparison with studies for the state sector, relatively few of which have found a consistent and significant effect.
    school resources, exam performance, teacher-pupil ratio, private schools
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