This paper investigates the effects of resale price maintenance (RPM) agreements in Europe by studying a legally-permitted form of RPM in the book market. In particular, we study the effects of such agreements on prices and sales, finding that countries which have Fixed Book Prices witness higher book sales with no noticeable effect on the average price of books. Whilst these results are limited to the book sector, they highlight that RPM agreements have the ability to confer positive competition effects and absolute prohibition of such agreements may not always be warranted.

A large and increasing proportion of teaching in UK universities is being fulfilled by staff on casual, rather than permanent, contracts. This paper examines how the proportion of teaching by casual staff affected student satisfaction in 2014–15. We find that an increased proportion of casual teaching leads to lower student satisfaction, even when controlling for respondent’s subject, university and faculty. This suggests a trade-off between increasing casualisation and student satisfaction, which could have implications for future student demand. These results can be generalised to the rest of the economy and highlight potential perverse effects arising from casual contracts.

This paper investigates the “adaptive investment effect”, a redirection of investment towards adaptive capital in order to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. We find that the impact of investment on economic growth is reduced by between 27% and 37% in Chinese provinces investing more in adaptive capital. This implies that the benefits from mitigation policies are greater than existing studies suggest.

This paper investigates the effects of the introduction of a quality rating system on consumer demand and switching behaviour in the English primary healthcare sector. We investigate the staggered publishing of these ratings by the sector regulator to examine how the availability of information affects patient switching.

Low Price Guarantees promise consumers that a retailer will match prices with eligible competitors. These policies are frequently used by retailers across the economy. On the face of it, such policies sound good for consumers, who ought to receive lower prices. However, economic theory is not conclusive on the actual effect. Theories of collusion and price discrimination predict that such guarantees could result in price rises, to the detriment of consumers. On the other hand, low price signalling theories would predict that LPGs are good for consumers. In this paper, I test the empirical effects of the removal of a low price guarantee at a leading UK retailer, and find evidence that prices rise post-removal of the policy. This implies that low price guarantees have a pro-competitive effect on retail prices and provides evidence supportive of pro-competitive arguments. Interestingly, I find that there is no effect at the retailer who removed the promise but instead that its competitors were the ones to raise prices post-removal of the guarantee.