Recent theoretical developments relating to investment under uncertainty have highlighted the importance of irreversibility for the timing of investment expenditures and their expected returns. This has subsequently stimulated a growing empirical literature which examines uncertainty and...

This paper focuses on the determinants of aggregate investment spending in the UK for the industrial and commercial company (ICC) sector. It complements recent work by Cuthbertson and Gasparro (1995), who study an augmented Tobin's q model of investment in the manufacturing sector. Important...

The paper provides a selective survey of methods and findings concerning the impact of tax and welfare policies on employment, unemployment, and economic growth in OECD countries. The paper examines a number of facets of tax and welfare policy and concludes that cross-country macroeconomic...

In the 1997 and 1998 waves of the British Household Panel Survey, workers are asked to assess their level of job security in terms of the probability of becoming unemployed within the next year. We examine whether these perceptions of insecurity are purely subjective or are systematically...

In 1996 and 1997, approximately 1 in 10 British workers thought that it was either likely or very likely that they would lose their job within 12 months. Increased job insecurity has been touted as a possible cause for the decline of equilibrium unemployment in Britain and the United States...

This paper examines whether subjective expectations of unemployment are reliable indicators of the probability of becoming unemployed, and investigates their association with wage growth. We find that workers’ fears of unemployment are increased by their previous unemployment experience and by...

There are two findings that are conspicuous in almost all studies of individual wage determination. First, standard cross-section wage equations rarely account for more than half of the total variance in earnings between individuals. Second, there are large and persistent inter-industry wage...

Two well-established findings are apparent in the analyses of individual wage determination: cross-section wage equations can account for less than half of the variance in earnings and there are large and persistent inter-industry wage differentials. We explore these two empirical regularities...

This paper investigates whether the female self-employed are more affected by the COVID-19 crisis than the male self-employed using longitudinal data four months following the first 'lockdown' in the UK. We specifically test the role of family/social, economic and psychological factors on...

This paper is concerned with whether women are less likely to express business start-up intentions because of a less favourable attitude to risk. Previous research suggests that attitude to risk differs significantly between genders, but has not addressed the question of whether this contributes...