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This paper, a pioneering one in the Israeli context, aims to augment the research literature on school quality and housing prices by examining the effect of primary-school performance on local property values. It focuses on the main question whether the release of students’ test scores offered households a new source of information with which they could evaluate the quality of schools, thereby affecting local housing markets.

Several models that examine a variety of transactions, schools and locality characteristics that affect house prices are estimated. Using different administrative sources of information, a wide array of socioeconomic characteristics of students, parents and homebuyers, as well as locality features, is constructed and merged. This information, combined with students’ scores on Meitzav exams (standardized student achievement tests) in 2009-2012 and house prices, illuminates the relationship between student achievements and the prices of houses purchased within the defined attendance zones.

Student achievements, mainly in the state education system, are found to have a positive and statistically significant effect on housing prices. Accurate information published about a certain school that showed much stronger achievements than those yielded by information attainable about the same school before school-level publication, does contribute to boost house prices in the post-publication period. The socioeconomic background of the students’ parents was found to have a significant effect on house prices. The premium for housing value is much higher in the most prestigious, prime demand districts, in which the housing supply is limited and the housing price level is higher than in that the peripheral districts.

This study not only breaks new ground in the Israeli context but also contributes to the existing literature, by investigating the relation between publishing students’ scores and property values near the same schools, on a national scale. Given that the housing price dynamics and the spatial differentiation of housing stock are extremely hot issues in many European cities, the results of this study could serve as an important tool for better understanding the housing price responses to market incentives, resulting in specific patterns in local housing markets. This paper could be thus applicable in housing policy outline, urban design and planning.

The paper outlines and examines a social‐institutional conception of income inequality or economic distribution. The fundamental proposition of this conception is that income inequality/distribution is far from being the outcome of the operation of strictly market laws or economic forces but rather one of institutional arrangements or social structures. Of the latter particularly important have shown to be the institutional structure of the economy, particularly labour markets, as well as the degree of democracy of political systems. The results suggest transcending single‐factor economic explanations and predictions of income inequality, as implied in the Kuznets curve and its ramifications, in favour of an alternative multilevel sociological approach.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efficacy of Nigeria's oil and gas industry local content (LC) policy, with particular reference to how the policy has enhanced entrepreneurial activities and served as panacea to resolving some of the country's socio‐economic challenges within the oil‐producing Niger Delta region.

Survey data were randomly obtained from a questionnaire sample of 120 indigenes in Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers states; and subjected to factor‐analysis using varimax rotation to identify the most crucial factors likely to influence the success of the policy. Cronbach's α was also applied to ascertain the reliability of the data and overall agreement amongst respondents.

The study reveals a general level of indifference amongst the respondents, and an insignificant level of entrepreneurial implication, regarding the LC policy. Notwithstanding, the need to create business prospects, jobs opportunities, and establish special quota arrangements to benefit indigenes of the oil producing host‐communities were found to be most crucial in their assessment of the policy's efficacy.

It is expected that the policy should stimulate and open up more channels for budding entrepreneurial activities, job opportunities and wealth generation. These would mitigate situations of unwarranted militant activities, social disorder and disguised criminalities such as kidnapping and destruction of oil installations, resulting from perceived marginalisation, massive unemployment and poor living standards experienced within the region.

The study provides insights into how the LC policy, if properly harnessed and judiciously implemented, can generate win‐win outcomes for the nation, multi‐national oil companies, host communities and indigenous entrepreneurs.