This book addresses the realities of the circular economy, a resource efficiency concept that has risen to global prominence in academic, policy and business circles over the last decade. Considered an approach to sustainable growth, the volume critically analyses how sustainable emerging...

A free competitive market offers wide opportunities for individuals and businesses and is compatible with the framework of classical liberalism. It is also the best environment for boosting productivity and economic growth. * Theere are uncompetitive elements within the UK's private sector which...

In recent months, there has been an intensifying debate over whether Europe can still rely on US extended nuclear deterrence or should begin to consider alternatives that are independent of Washington. A binary approach - trust or no trust - is of limited analytical value here; the subject matter...

We examine the evolution of the gender income gap in UK and Ireland between 2008 and 2019 by income decile and decompose it to evaluate the relative importance of gender differences in working hours, self-employment, and hourly pay, as well as the redistributive effect of the tax-benefit system....

Looking at the earnings profiles of men and women after their first child is born, a number of studies establish that women suffer a larger penalty in earnings than men - a child penalty. Leveraging randomness in the sex of the first birth, we show that the child penalty in the UK is larger when...

Our investigation examined the impact of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) activities on corporate financial distress. This research utilised data from companies listed in the FTSE All-Share index from 2014 to 2022 from the Refinitiv EIKON database. We incorporated year- and...

Over the past six decades our political, philosophical and legal approaches to discrimination have evolved, moving from a laissez-faire attitude to complex legislation that addresses both 'direct' and 'indirect' discrimination. Some argue now for the complete abolition of anti-discrimination...

The existing monetary framework of the Bank of England fails to manage supply-side shocks and financial crises effectively, which leads to economic volatility and potential policy errors. Targeting the growth path of nominal GDP would provide a more stable and predictable macroeconomic...

Parallel imports are genuine products imported into the United Kingdom without the consent of the intellectual property (IP) rights holder, often taking place when there is a price or availability difference between markets. Parallel import restrictions (PIRs) allow producers to control...

The Freeports strategy announced by the previous government attempted to address today's challenges with yesterday's recipes, lacked the necessary deregulatory framework and failed to address key issues such as the housing crisis. This paper proposes an alternative: a new generation of 'Hong...

The theoretical advantage of single-issue pressure groups is that they can form broad coalitions, gathering people from across the political spectrum who need not agree on anything other than the group's single issue. For example, Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) is a group that...

Mancur Olson explained in The Logic of Collective Action (1965) that the free rider problem and the paradox of participation discourage rational consumers from taking collective action to oppose policies that disadvantage them. The lack of grassroots opposition to 'nanny state' policies from...

This paper uses the Brexit referendum in 2016 as a quasi-natural experiment to estimate the effect of an exogenous negative shock to globalization on executive compensation for German companies listed in the DAX and MDAX stock indices. We show that it matters whether they work for firms...

We employ Synthetic Control Method techniques to estimate the causal effect of Brexit on the consumer price index (CPI) in the United Kingdom. We construct a counterfactual CPI index from a weighted pool of comparable economies and find that the price level of the United Kingdom rose...

This paper presents a review of global evidence and World Bank operational experience and distills lessons to support the empowerment of youth. The review of global literature reveals three fundamental principles: (i) interventions that seek to promote jobs and economic empowerment of youth are...

Purpose This study aims to analyse the effects of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on the return of growth/value and small/large-cap stocks during expansionary and recessionary periods across a conditional distribution. Design/methodology/approach The authors selected a sample covering the...