This report describes the task for jobseekers in the UK labour market in 2010–11. It focuses on young jobseekers with limited education and skills, and particularly on those from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

An important problem in reproductive medicine is deciding when people who have failed to become pregnant without medical assistance should begin investigation and treatment. This study describes a computational approach to determining what can be deduced about a couple's future chances of...

This set of six articles on the theme of work, well-being and resilience were posted on the blog between September and November 2011. All the posts are written by Elizabeth Cotton.

China’s pragmatic attitude towards its own 30 years of reform can be used to similarly characterise its attitude toward the global fi nancial crisis of 2008 and the resultant push for further economic reforms. China was able to manage the downturn following 2008, and has a good chance of...

This paper investigates whether people’s ability to withstand and adapt to one of the most important economic shocks – job loss – is determined early on in childhood. Using nationally representative longitudinal data that tracks almost 3,000 children into adulthood, we show that the...

The study of welfare capitalism is concerned with a founding question of political economy, namely how capitalism and democracy can be combined. Ever since the publication of Esping-Andersen’s Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism in 1990, the answer was sought in identifying ideal types of...

Using a longitudinal data of British youths, this paper explores the consequences of past parental unemployment on the current happiness and self-esteem of the children. We find that a past unemployment spell of the father has important consequences for their children and leads to them having...

Ignoring the need for prevention can store up big problems for the future, whether the issue is health or criminal justice, homelessness or poor performance at school. But faced with austerity, the risk is that local services concentrate on making cuts now and think about the long-term later. At...

This paper studies the policy implications of habits and cyclical changes in agents' appetite for risk-taking. To do so, it analyses the non-linear solution of a New Keynesian (NK) model, in which slow-moving habits help match the cyclical properties of risk-premia. Our findings suggest that the...

The productivity challenge means staff should have a greater role in planning and achieving efficiencies, says Neil Reeder