Does the effect of job loss on psychological distress differ by educational level?

We examine the impact of involuntary job loss on psychological distress and investigate whether the impact differs by educational level using a sample of men drawn from the British Household Panel Study. We expect higher-educated men to suffer less from job loss because they have more resources and better re-employment chances. Alternatively, it could […]

The distributional impact of the Greek crisis in 2010

The severe economic crisis affecting Greece is widely thought to be having a significant social impact in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an early assessment of whether (and to what extent) this was the case in 2010, the first year of the Greek crisis. We distinguish between two interrelated factors: […]

An instrumental variable approach to unemployment, psychological health and social norm effects

This empirical study presents estimates of the impact of unemployment on psychological health using UK household panel data. The causal impact of unemployment is established using instrumental variable methods. Psychological health is measured using both the General Household Questionnaire measure and also self-reported data on individual occurrences of anxiety-related conditions. We find evidence for […]

Impact of cultural diversity on wages, evidence from panel data

This paper combines individual data from the British Household Panel Survey and yearly population estimates for England to analyse the impact that cultural diversity has on individual wages. Do people living in more diverse areas earn higher wages after controlling for other observable and unobservable characteristics? The results show that cultural diversity is positively […]

The impact of socioeconomic reforms on the work incentives in Latvia

Paper identifies the impact of the proposed and alternative socioeconomic reforms on changes in work incentives in Latvia. This paper aims at the assessing the role of Personal Income Tax and basic allowance in influencing Marginal Effective Tax Rates assessed using various scenarios of hypothetical policy changes. Results show that the tax reform implemented […]

Residential energy expenditures and the relevance of changes in household circumstances

This paper analyses the impact that dwelling characteristics and characteristics and behaviours of household members have on per capita energy expenditures. It also analyses whether changes in household socio-economic circumstances translate in changes in energy expenditures. Socio-economic characteristics have a moderate impact, while dwelling characteristics and especially household size have much larger impacts. The […]

New Labour and work-time regulation: a Marxian analysis of the UK economy

This article examines the impact of work-time regulation, introduced by the UK’s New Labour governments (1997–2010). In doing so, we return to Marx’s hypotheses regarding the length of the working day. These include the arguments that class conflict over the length of the working day is inherently distributional in a surplus-value sense and that […]

The impact of social capital on consumption insurance and income volatility in the UK: evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

[…] individual and household level, and use them as explanatory variables in standard consumption insurance tests. We find that two out of three aspects of social capital positively impact on consumption smoothing, by reducing the sensitivity of idiosyncratic consumption to idiosyncratic income, both in the long and in the short run. Such effects, however, turn […]

Housing need outcomes in England through changing times: demographic, market and policy drivers of change

The housing system in England has experienced unprecedented stress and instability over the last decade, absorbing the impact of demographic pressure, a credit-fuelled boom, financial crisis, recession and policy change. A failing supply system and unexpected tenure changes now confront austerity and welfare cutback. How have these conditions impacted on traditional and contemporary indicators […]