Testing some predictions of human capital theory: new training evidence from Britain

[…] theories with new training data from the British Household Panel Survey. We find that employer-financed training is associated with significantly higher wages at current and future firms, with a larger impact in future firms. This is consistent with human capital theory with credit constraints and with the new training literature assuming imperfectly competitive labor markets.

Latent class models for use of primary care: evidence from a British panel

[…] health care. Analysis by gender shows that men and women respond differently to some factors, in particular, to age and income. There is evidence of a positive impact of income on the probability of seeking primary care. This effect is especially significant in the case of women. For both genders, the marginal effect of […]

Universal versus targeted benefits: the distributional effects of free school meals

[…] shift in policy until now. We examine the effect of this divergence in welfare policy. We look at the issue of universality and targeting by examining the impact of the proposal for the introduction of universal free school meals to all children in full-time state education. The current system of free school meals is […]

Earnings and linguistic proficiency in a bilingual economy

[…] researched. Typically studies find that bilingual workers are disadvantaged. Governments often protect minority languages through official promotion of bilingualism, with potential economic consequences. This paper addresses the impact of bilingualism on earnings, using the example of Wales. Results show a positive raw differential of 8 to 10 per cent depending on definition of linguistic […]

Debt and financial expectations: an individual- and household-level analysis

In this article we show that optimistic financial expectations impact positively on both the quantity of debt and the growth in debt at the individual and household levels. Our theoretical model shows that this association is predicted under a variety of plausible scenarios. In the empirical analysis we explore the determinants of debt and […]

Shareholder primacy and the distribution of wealth

[…] the result that shareholder primacy is in reality the primacy of a small privileged elite. After an exploration of the contradictions of working class shareholding and the impact of greater shareholder-orientation on the distribution of wealth, the paper concludes by re-evaluating Hansmann and Kraakman’s ‘end of corporate history’ thesis, arguing that recent developments represent […]

Rising to the challenge: will the NHS support people with long term conditions?

[…] term conditions. In the foreword, John Reid, the secretary of state for health, outlines how a “major investment in services closer to home will ensure much better support for patients who have long-term conditions, enabling them to minimise the impact of these on their lives.”2 We discuss how the NHS might rise to this challenge.

Neighbourhood social capital and neighbourhood effects

[…] and behavioural patterns by their neighbours, with interpersonal conversation being the main means of transmitting such influence. Although there is an increasing body of evidence showing the impact of such conversations that people who talk together, vote together relatively little of this has grounded the geography of such conversations in the individuals’ local neighbourhoods. […]